Role Model (Closed)

A shiver ran down Reyna’s spine as soon as she set foot inside of her dressing room. The room itself was nice, but everything it represented was terrifying beyond words. Everything from the bright lights in the mirror to the cracking wallpaper reminded her of the fact that she was about to posing in front of a literal army of cameras, not even practically nude, but clad in a bunch of clothing that definitively wasn’t her style. She wouldn’t have even taken such a high profile job if not for the literal urgings of her new comrade, Rakish.

Rakish’d urged her to consider the job and to think of it as a way to better herself through the conquering of her fears and anxieties. What kind of powerful mage could allow themselves to be ruled by fear?

I can allow myself to be ruled by fear, Reyna thought, appraising herself in the mirror. She was even paler than usual, and her eyes were practically bulging out of their sockets. Stray beads of sweat ran down the sides of her face like refugees fleeing from the flood, only to go kerplunk and plummet to the floor. Still staring at her reflection, she couldn’t help but to reason with herself.Fear isn’t bad, if it means I can just go home and go to sleep.

The outfit she was being forced to wear was, admittedly, not all that terrible or terrifying. It was a drab green version of the one she usually wore, minus the cape. According to the designer that’d put the ensemble together -- a portly woman named Chanelle Leflouer -- the cape just made everything look too matronly, whatever that meant. It was a fair criticism, probably, but Reyna still didn’t like it.

She also didn’t like the material that the outfit was made out of. Her own clothes were made out of a silk-cotton blend, but the one she was wearing felt like a set of military fatigues. They were heavy and almost too cumbersome to be cloth, and she felt like a stone while wearing every pea-colored piece of it.

Still, she subdued her inner grumblings just long enough for her to come to peace with the whole ordeal. She would be paid handsomely for “modeling,” an activity that consisted entirely of strangers photographing her in an extremely well lit environment.

”Let’s get this over with,” she breathed, flexing at herself in the mirror.

”You want me to pose like this?”

Reyna stood with her gloved hands on her hips, staring aggressively into the camera before her. Another camera hovered over her left shoulder, capturing her “good side” and taking what one of the photographers had called a “power shot.” Honestly, she didn’t understand most of the terms they were throwing around. Every side of her was a good side and every shot of her was a power shot. No matter how they actually said it, it sounded like they were just throwing out jargon to sound important.

A bright light flashed in her face and she literally recoiled, flailing back until she eventually went crashing into a prop-tree in the background. It crumpled like the cardboard it was made out of and folded over her head as she hit the ground, but refused to break.

”You have to tell me when you’re going to take the picture, doofus,” she groaned, slowly setting herself upright. ”Surprising me really isn’t a good idea!”

The photographers grinned and knelt down, eager to get a picture of the wrathful expression plastered across her face... but the shadows of the cardboard tree ruined their shots, and they gave up without much fuss, except for one unlucky photographer that attempted to snap a quick picture of the scene and had his camera crushed by a pair of black combat boots for the trouble.

The photographs themselves turned out well enough by the end of the day, and the head shooter (which was, apparently, another way of saying “photographer”) let her take a set of the photos home with her. None of them were particularly exciting, and she’d gone so far as to point that out, but the lead photographer didn’t seem concerned.

“We’ll touch it up in post,” he said, dismissively.

She looked him up and down with a frown. The lead photographer was a stout man, about two inches shorter than the already diminutive Reyna, with a mousey face and squirrel-colored hair.

”What the hell is post?” Reyna asked.

“Basically, we take it in to one of our editors and he plays around with it. Adds lighting effects we don’t have in house, touches up the backdrop, maybe changes some other things, y’know. Standard stuff.”

None of it sounded very standard, but Reyna accepted the man’s answers without much debate. She knew very little about photography and even less about how modeling worked, and the more questions she asked, the more her curiosity dwindled. She was a fan of action and adventure, not of... posing prettily and taking awkward photographs for creeps that read a magazine for the pretty women inside.

It was the newfound notoriety that came afterward that made Reyna hate the photoshoot the most. Not even a day after the magazine’s economy-friendly issue released, citizens all over the place stopped and stared at her, jaw agape. She couldn’t help but to feel as though they were picturing her differently than they would have before. She already hated people -- well, some people -- but having them stare at her like vapid idiots constantly was almost too much to bear.

Rakish, at least, didn’t treat her any differently. Then again, he’d been the one who told her to do it in the first place.

Over a drink, she eventually asked him the question that’d been bothering her since the shoot.

”Do you even want to see the pictures?” she asked, sounding almost bitter. Or maybe that was just the taste of beer, lingering in her mouth like wheat-foam. ”I mean, you told me to do it. You must want to see ‘em.”

Rakish sloshed back a hearty gulp of his own brew.

“No,” he began between gulps. “I don’t care about the photographs. I don’t even read the magazine.”

”Then why the hell did you tell me to do it?!” Reyna replied, slamming her beer on the table in frustration. He hadn’t really been serious about all of that “conquer your fear” bullcrap, had he?

“I told you, Basterbine,” he addressed her -- like always -- by her last name. “How can a great mage be controlled by petty fear? Do I let my fear control me?”

She paused, suddenly caught off guard.

“Wait, are you even a mage?”