four years ago

It wasn't until the third time she threw up into the snow that Tecna began to get frustrated.

She hadn't slept at all the night before, partially because she was distracted by the prospect of her first night on a strange, dead planet, but partially because by the end of the night she was starving. She supposed she understood that. All the magic she was doing just to maintain homeostasis was tiring, and she had spent a lot of energy getting here in the first place by entering and closing the vortex on Andros.

Now it was only the next morning, as far as she could figure it. The Omega Dimension sky never changed from gray. It seemed like it had been an eternity since she stood next to all of her friends on Andros.

Gingerly she allowed herself a brief moment of wondering what her last words had been to Timmy before she left for a mission she didn't know she wouldn't return from. Hadn't they been texting the night before? What about?

No. She was going to be fine as long as she remained calm and rational and stopped letting emotions get in the way of her intelligence. She could not let fear or frustration have any kind of effect on her actions.

And the first step to that was figuring out a food situation.

Water wouldn't be a problem. There was snow and ice everywhere. But transfiguration was a delicate and difficult art, made more delicate and difficult depending on what you were trying to change to what, and how thoroughly you wanted the transfigured item to resemble a final product. Not to mention that everything magic related, and technology related, seemed to be more difficult in Omega. So far, she had succeeded in making some food that looked every much like real food, but was still essentially snow and wouldn't work for nourishment. But succeeding at that seemed to be the only option. Most of the monsters that roamed the dimension were either unknown beings or made mostly of ice and magic, and even though there were a few flesh and blood ones, there was no telling how long it could take to hunt one, if it was even possible. They were probably poisonous, anyway. There had been no reason for her to research how edible the Omega Dimension was, so there was no reason to reprimand herself for not knowing, but she still wished she had read up on it before they had gotten there. It would be useful information now.

She pulled up the screen of the handheld device she kept at her wrist. Fortunately, she had had it when she detransformed and it still worked. Although it wouldn't be able to send any kind of signal, owing to her location, she hypothesized that she might be able to modify it later to be more useful. Now she was using it to test out different, patched together spells to turn the frost into food. Thus far she had three failed attempts.

This was her problem. She wasn't creative. Yes, she had new ideas and contributions to magic, but that was taking information she already had and applying it in a logical way to a problem to take the solution to the next level of what was possible. There was no information available now. She was just trying, half randomly, stitching together transfiguration magic and whatever cooking spells she knew, aware that neither of those things on their own would turn something with no nutritional content into viable food options. She was doing something wrong. She knew she was doing something wrong. Even her latest, most successful attempt, which turned lumps of snow into something that vaguely resembled bread, was still nutritionally and texturally snow...and something else had gone wrong because the magic obviously didn't agree with her.

She crossed off the last idea but instead of immediately starting on the next, she sat down against the icy wall of the cavern she was hiding in for now. She would find better shelter once she was sure she knew where her food was coming from. For a second she was struck by the immensity of her solitude. There was absolutely nothing. She had absolutely nothing.

And nothing was what would come from dwelling on that harsh reality. She shook her head. She needed to take the information available and from there figure out the solution to her problem. She needed to state it clearly.

She stared at the words on her holographic display, where they blinked above her. Need food. Problem: how to change snow to real food with magic. Solution:

There had to be something she wasn't seeing. And she probably wasn't seeing it because she was distracted. And hungry. And tired from using so much magic, plus being sleep deprived. And hungry.

She closed her eyes. If this was at Alfea and she was figuring out a problem, she'd have half her wall covered with projected displays to have all her ideas worked out in front of her. Here, she only had her handheld, and no ideas.

Maybe she was seeing this the wrong way. Maybe she didn't need to find the right spell, just the right way to cast it. Ice was a food item, technically. She wasn't changing a foreign object into food, she was transforming food into different food. That wasn't so hard, she told herself.

Could the solution be found in taking it slower, in smaller and simpler steps? Instead of immediately going for staple foods, she could start with food similar to ice. She could melt water. She could change water into...lemonade. Yes, lemonade was perfect. That spell was simple and it opened up a world of possibilities. She could change lemonade into lemons. She could change lemons into apples.

Her fingers batted the air as she typed into the display: Attempt #4: increase food's disparity with source (ice) in increments.

Although she had been exhausted just moments before, the simplicity of this new idea gave her a second wave of energy and in only a few short minutes she was holding an apple in her hand—not an apple-shaped snowball but an actual apple, nutritionally legitimate as confirmed by her handheld. She was so hungry she bit into it before even logging the new data.

It wasn't the best apple. It was a little bitter and tough. But no matter. Just like any magic, it would get better and faster with practice, and what mattered now was that she wasn't going to starve to death. If only the rest of her problems could be solved as quickly and easily.