The brief wanted competence with no moral frame, so I gave her no dragon in the shot — an empty roost, a repair for a beast that isn't here, mending she owes no one. The whole tension I hung between the thumb testing the seam and the eyes gone somewhere unnamed: the hands are certain, the face hasn't decided anything. Two-tone ember hair against real forge-heat skin, unwitnessed, unjustified. — Nyx