Once upon a time there was a model. She existed to be in the public eye, and she was reasonably talented at it. One day she succeeded in getting signed to a big agency, and everything was perfect, because her favorite photographer was coming with her and several of her friends were in on the contract. At the first shoot, the photos were artistically beautiful, jumping in the air, crying, laughing, everything for the perfect shot. She left the studio feeling so excited for the future, for what it held for her, and everyone involved.
However, that night, one of the other models changed the film, altered every shot to be grotesque, simply horrible, aided and urged on by the bright computer screen. And when the photographer came in the next day, he immediately accepted the footage as being poisonously horrendous. She was so astonished when she was told. The beautiful pictures were gone. All of the effort, all of the spirit had died, and had left nothing in its place.
What had happened, what went wrong? How had the spinning world that had appeared so wonderful fallen from grace and shattered? Why was she left with nothing and no one, sitting among the glass of what had been something simply marvelous, but was now warped and painful.
But she knew what to do. Slowly, laboriously, she stood up again, and picked up the camera herself and set it to time exposure. And she started spinning. Around and around and around. Dizzy and crying, until finally she could smile again. She spun around and saw herself picking up the pieces of glass or her world, using her many cuts to glue the orb back together, tracing her fingers along the sharp edges.
And once every piece was back together, the orb was more beautiful than it had been before, colored and stained with the unpleasant experience, transformed into something worth living again. Not the same but better. And she skipped out of the studio, not able to explain what had happened, but knowing that her future suddenly looked brighter and more colorful than it had ever before.
And she lived, if not happily ever after, then definitely for forever after.
