Backdated to 5/6/26
When she first restored the power to her Wonder the elevator would make very loud noises as it went, and she'd gotten used to the sound of metal scraping along metal whenever she used it. It wasn't until recently that she noticed the elevator had stopped making any kind of noises at all, and the change had unnerved her at first. What could have happened? Was there someone else here, moving around in secret and making improvements?
Ultimately, since it was improvement, Ekstrom decided to just be grateful for it and move on. Nothing happened, no one popped out of nowhere to explain the WWWWH of it, and...well. She was learning to be okay with not knowing the "why" behind smaller, arguably trivial, things.
It was an uphill battle, but she was trying.
"Hey, thanks again for coming," she said as the elevator took them up, an apologetic little smile on her lips. "I hate to pull you into this mess, but coming alone isn't really an option and there's only a handful of people I can trust that have a good handle on this sorta thing, so."
She pulled a polaroid from her subspace then, a slightly impish turn to her smile as she held it out to Themi. It was the photo she'd taken of Ashur's reaction to first seeing the mess that he helped her clean up however many weeks ago now. It was a unique picture in that the subject in it moved. This one showed the way Ashur's expression changed from calm but questioning to shock—wide eyes, slack jaw, and all—as the elevator doors opened to reveal the state the room had been in at the time.
"It's not much, but I thought you might like it. And it doesn't make up for the trouble we're probably about to walk into, but I'm hoping it might cheer you up whenever you look at it.
