Later that morning (Monday, November 29, 2021) - Ella;’s Studio; Greenwich Village, New York City, United States

Ella lay in bed. The sunlight peeked through the drawn curtains and denied her sleep. She was tired after staying up the whole night but her mind kept racing through what she had heard.

She pulled her phone out and started to write notes on it all. And seeing it in print left very few choices.

She typed on her phone quickly and then slowed down as the conclusion became inevitable:

Potential leads 1. Jae's great grandmother 2. Immortal banker; high potential danger

She picked up the phone and FaceTimed Jae-Young. Her smile was brittle, “You get your booster yet?”

Unsurprisingly, tickets to Reykjavik from New York in the winter were cheap. They bought them for the winter break.

Until then, Ella trained harder and harder. Her life turned into fighting, physics work, then physical training. Jae started working out with her, spending more time on grappling and trying to adapt a lifetime of sport taekwondo to combat. In the late evenings while Ella studied, he spent time on the phone with his grandfather, trying to trace more about this mysterious elfin ancestor.

Jade and Charlie often joined them to study but her relentless focus was too much for them. Ella knew she needed to stay on her game. She couldn’t go ask for a sabbatical just having started her doctorate program and there was no time.

Even her body started feeling painful and sore from the training she was doing. She fought with increasing desperation each morning, Donna enjoying the ferocity, and Craig brushing them off with his experience. But it still helped quiet her fears. The high-knee sprint to Union Square in the evening through the snow and weightlifting at the end of the day at the school gym became a count of marginal gains in time and pounds.

Jae said she had to play the right music in her headphones when she did it and loaded up her playlists with ’80s movie music.1. Eventually she got sick of it and changed her playlists back.

And then when she got home to sleep, she couldn’t. She starting wondering what it meant to be a magical princess and her dreams became erratic and bizarre nightmares of her being a despot. And so she began reading beginner texts on economics and policy until her eyes couldn’t stay open.2

Rinse, repeat.

It was two days before winter break and she came home from her morning gym to find a crowd in her shared studio.

“Yes, Ella, this is an intervention.” Charlie chuckled and handed her a drink.

Even Jae was there and, when she looked around, Professor Fedoriw was sitting there cup in hand.

Jade stood up and said, “Ella. You have just gone insane. You are either at the gym or studying. You don’t sleep and that shit is keeping me up at night.”

Charlie chimed in, “and you look like shit!”

The professor stood up and held his hands out placatingly, “Now, now, let’s not be mean. What your friend Charlotte meant to say, is we are all worried about you, and you look like shit.”

Ella sat down on her bed next to Jae and looked at him. “Did you know about this?”

Jae-Young shook his head, “I just came over and found them here. But I agree with them. You are trying to do too much, too intensely.”

Ella looked around the room and saw looks of concern. Except for Charlie who winked at her.

She looked at Craig, sitting next to his sister, “I suppose this is why you weren’t at the gym this morning?”

Craig just nodded solemnly.

“Well, here is to having friends that care,” and she tipped back her cup of orange juice to find out it was a very, very strong screwdriver. After coughing, she yelled at Charlie, “It is like eight in the morning!… Are you all drinking this?”

Charlie stood up and in that strong Savannah belle accent that came out, knowingly, only when she was at her most obnoxious, “Why, yes we are, hun. To a day of inebriation and vice.”

Everyone raised their cup, toasted, and took a swig. Jade turned on the music and started dancing on her bed3. Craig snuck out with a small wave to her. Ella caught Professor Fedoriw adding more vodka into the pitcher.

Eventually the morning bled into lunchtime when pizza showed up, this deliverance did not go unrewarded by the crowd although the sated hunger meant people started to leave.

Professor Fedoriw on his way out, “Consider your winter break as starting now. You are going to be a brilliant physicist one day, but not if you burn yourself out balwan.” He patted her on the head affectionately on his way out.

In the end she was cuddled up with Jae-Young in a half-drunken haze. He suddenly spoke, “I’m sorry if this was ambushing you. But you were trying to do too much. I understand that getting stabbed freaked you out, but you were out of control.”

“I had thought you were sleeping. And you were right. All of you. But you are wrong. It wasn’t getting stabbed…”

She tried in her head to put it in words, “I have this tiara thing. But what does it mean? I am not even worried about the why me part. Instead, what do I do with it? I have been getting physically fit since obviously I need to. But what does it mean to be a princess? What is magic and why is it appearing now?”

“So I started reading about monarchies and governance in case I needed to. But magic keeps increasing in appearance. Something big is coming. Conflict is coming. And I don’t know what to do.”

“Uneasy the head that wears the crown,” murmured Jae-Young.

“Shit, that is right on. But what is worse is when that crown sits on the head of someone that knows nothing.”

“Well whatever this is, you will rise to it. It is all very unfair. Unfair to you.”

“Yeah well tell me something I don’t know…” her voice murmured sleepily. “Well I suppose we will find out more in Iceland.”

“Yes.” And he listened to her breathing even out as she fell into a deep and still sleep.

Songs like “Eye of the Tiger” by Survivor and “You’re the Best” by Joe Esposito. Maybe Jae should grow a mullet.

Ella is an Amartya Sen kind of girl. So Identity and Violence: The Illusion of Destiny

“Dancing Queen” by Abba