Couture and Brochures

“Oh you’re exactly what I need!”

Andi blinked confusedly as she felt her arm grabbed, looking over to see a pretty doll shaped bun looking intently at her. She tilted her head in confusion, only growing more confused as they kept talking.

“One of my models had to drop out of this runway last minute, and I’ve needed someone to fill in for them, if you’re willing it would be a life saver.”

“Uh…sure?” Andi was very confused, but it sounded like they wanted her to do something, and the effort involved to make an actual decision that wasn’t the path of least resistance was, as ever, far too high.

“Wonderful, wonderful,” they said, and hurried her onwards.

In surprisingly little time, she found herself in a makeup chair for the first time in her life while another bun filled out some sort of form with her information. Someone was fussing with her face and someone was fussing with her hair and ears - it all felt very weird, especially once she saw the makeup they were applying. Were those pearls being stuck to her face? Was that a fashion? Why were they making her eyelashes so…big…?

The clothes were a little better. At the least, they showed off her muscles really well, even if she didn’t think they would survive a day in a gym. Kaili had ordered her to get some nice clothes ages ago, which she had, but other than those, she didn’t really care about fancy clothes. What was the point of a shirt that would rip if you lifted weights in it?

“Right, you know how to walk a runway right?”

She’d been ushered into a line of others by now, and she blinked with confusion at the bun who had grabbed her first. “What’s a runway?” she asked.

Other buns in the line giggled as the first one looked like they had no idea how to answer. “It’s- It’s a row of flooring that you walk on to model clothes.”

“Well I know how to walk so I don’t know why that would be different enough to ask about,” she said.

They gazed down for long moments. “Well, I suppose I should have expected that grabbing whoever I could would lead to something like this. I guess… Just show off your muscles as you walk, alright? That will help show the clothes off as I want them to be seen.”

Another bun whispered something to him and he sighed.

“Alright, show is about to begin. The stage manager will tell you when to walk.”

In moments, they were walking off, and slowly, the line began to shuffle forwards. Andi was confused how to show off her muscles

Andi almost stopped in her tracks when she saw all the lights pointed at her. But, she quickly recovered. Show off her muscles…more than the outfit already did?

She flexed as she walked, noting as she did that there was a spot where the other walkers seemed to stop and pose. Well, she could do better than those poses! When she reached the spot, she dropped to the ground to do some push-ups, before standing and lifting the far more petite bun behind her up into the air and onto her shoulder, flexing and posing again. Then she deposited them back on the ground, heading back and flexing more as she went, finally noticing that there sure were a lot of cameras in addition to the bright lights.

Andi didn’t mind when she got to peel off the fancy clothes and get rid of the weird pearls on her face, and she was very happy to go home - and more than a bit confused when, on the following day, she received a flurry of texts and messages asking about how she had met someone called Velveteen and wow they didn’t know she modeled- and her training account had a bunch of new messages and tags and followers too?

It wasn’t until she saw some of the photos she had been tagged in that she began to figure out that all this had something to do with that weird runway thing the day before. Maybe she’d actually done good at it?