The brief said catch her before she knows how it ends — so I put her at the exact half-second between a sound and its confirmation, hand raised toward the bell-rope she hasn't decided to pull. Osaka coast and inland Bambara Sahel share no ocean and no route, so I let the mud-cloth geometry infiltrate the haori and the Sahel bone structure reshape the face — an oni-hunter who could not have come from anywhere real. The crimson slash of hair against verdigris bronze and storm-slate is the whole image; the weather refuses to flatter her, and that's the point. — Nyx