One by one, screens start to flicker. A bold but strangely quiet drum and bass line picks up across The Jungle as the screens lose picture entirely. Each of them, entirely black. Angry red lettering bursts across them all at once, reading "Audio Only" in the inefficient yet beautiful script of the human language. 

Mirror closes her eyes and takes a breath. Good. Everything is proceeding as directed. This will be an important test of not only her developing fashion skills, but her planning as well. She opens her eyes as wide as they'll go, sniffs the air as deeply as her nose will let her, strains her ears until they start to hurt, and makes a series of strange facial expressions to move her whiskers through the air. There are countless eyes on that stage. She doesn't want to miss a single one. 

"You were expecting me tonight, weren't you? Poor darlings, maybe next time! But I am here, in a much realer sense than you understand. Pull your eyes to the stage, and gaze upon my latest true form!"

Mayze Szerpaws has a quality to her voice that reminds a person of a diamond cutting glass. Sharp, dangerous, you can't help but want to wince. But for some reason you also know that everything that goes into it is beautiful. Mayze chuckles, seemingly in real time, as a few screens burst back to life to display the stage again. Mirror stays where she is in the crowd, and reaches behind her head to undo her hair loops. Her entrance requires four loops, not two. And more feathers. But the suit looked nicer with her hair the way she came. She works quickly, plucking dark blue, bright red, and sharp turquoise feathers out of a pocket and working them into the twists joining her hair loops together, and at the bottoms of each, where she secures them with a jade bead. She draws a knife next, and takes it to her pants. Too hard to slip them off in the choreographed time; easier to just destroy them. She ignores the looks she's starting to get. Her attention is only for the stage.

Up where eyes are supposed to be, a human woman walks shyly onto the stage. She is beautiful with her golden hair and honey eyes, with proportions fit to be a runway model from her toes all the way to the top of her head. But she walks with the confidence of someone who's never seen more than eleven people in a room once in her entire life, and as the lights catch her it's easy to see the splotches of scaled skin and discoloration that marks her rare skin condition. Treatable, of course. Little more than an inconvenience to her health at best. But it makes her feel undesirable and ugly. It has her entire life. And here she is, the tip of the spear for the most elusive, eccentric, and exclusive designer in the known galaxy. 

"I took the liberty of peeking ahead at my esteemed colleagues' offerings before tonight's show. Suffice it to say they are the reason I have chosen not to show my face here tonight. Do not mistake me! I am not afraid in the slightest. I cannot be cowed with fabrics, darlings, any more than I can by drones. No. I am [i]unimpressed.[/i] This show does not deserve my face."

The model has finished her turn up to the front of the walkway, posing stiffly in a series of clearly pre-established stances. She fights the urge to grab her arms and hide them the whole time. She is dressed in a leotard with a corset sewn in the colors of the sea. Deep, rich blues growing clearer and brighter as they approach her breasts, where the fabric halts in a burst of white foam ornamentation that slips through the middle of her cleavage and wraps around the top of her otherwise bear chest. Her neck is adorned with a sapphire-blue collar made from a single lace ribbon tied into a neat bow behind her. Her hips and thighs are bare, but around her left leg from the knee to halfway point of her calf is tied several bands of thick, shining golden jewelry binding a particularly rough patch of skin in translucent seafoam silk. The fabric is adorned with gold filigreed star charts, that tell the story of the first goddesses of Hybrasil and the founding of the star names. A more crass observer would call it a calendar. 

Her right arm is similarly adorned, creating a line from one side of her body to the other that one cannot help but follow no matter where or how she moves. The delicate silver chain wrapped around her waist and the moon charm dangling at the base of it are the center of the line; the eye is pulled first up and then diagonally down across all of her as easily as if Mayze had taken her audience's heads and turned them herself. And it's easy to notice that these silk sleeves are covering the most notable patches of her scales, but it would be a mistake to say she's hidden them. Indeed, the patterns of her star story can only stand out [i]because[/i] they have this unique canvas to shine against. The individual ridges and textures of the girl's skin are accounted for in the display of the constellations, displaying history, mythology, and beauty all at once where there had been nothing but a black pit of self esteem. Deep blue cuffs adorn her wrists, with fishnet gloves across both hands. She waves to the crowd once, twice, apparently unsure of her cue. Then she darts away with a squeak, but she can't keep the smile on her face from showing for the cameras before she vanishes.

"Not that I don't have the [i]utmost[/i] respect for my fellow designers, of course. And there are some true gems among you, may your starlight never blink out. If you know to let my words wash over you, then good news! I'm probably not talking about you! If you're turning to your companions right and and saying some silly thing about how 'you'd never', then bad news! I probably [i]am~[/i]"

The next model's theme is wings. Her pristine white robe is cut entirely with this single shape in mind. It hangs from her in gossamer layers connected by a single length of diamond chains fashioned into the shapes of starbursts and shark fangs draped across her shoulders. Wide swaths of fabric are simply... missing from the dress, exposing her pale albino skin and the deep purple markings painted across it, always in the pattern of falling feathers and wings. Her prominent ribs pin the fabric into place where her tiny chest and flat hips would fail to flatter it, until it gathers at her waist and flares open into a massive trailing gown made entirely of different shades of black, silver, and white feathers gathered off the ground from an aviary where Mirror happens to know a gal. 

Open at the front and darkest at the back, where her thin and surely unattractive legs are the stars of the show, and yet... the way those feathers kiss her. The way those wings envelope her. The way they move behind her as she walks and turn her into a swan? She's become some manner of goddess, the kind those star stories were written to warn you about (and, in fact, they were. someone will have to review the footage to notice). Her silvery high heels would be obscene on a girl this tall in any other context, but they are necessary to force her walk into a style that makes her train properly flap. Every step is a ripple of motion that makes her seem about to take flight. The illusion is possible because of her delicate build and divine height. A more traditionally beautiful girl would move in it differently, would seem more like she's hopping rather than preparing to soar across the stars, would hide the painted patterns in her darker skin. This dress was made for her to wear it, and only her. Just like the last one.

"So much time and effort, spent worrying about the how, and the what! So much talent wasted fussing over [i]materials[/i]. Materials! Ha! As if you could find a mesh woven well enough to cover for the tiny brains trapped inside those pretty skulls of yours. Good ideas, certainly. But you think that you are pushing the envelope? Ahaha! Idiots. You drape your [i]concepts[/i], your [i]toys[/i] across the most bare and basic forms you know. Is this a fashion show or a tech demo? There is nothing wrong with seeking new frontiers, but there is not a single one of you here brave enough to think beyond the basic cuts and ideas you've kept close to you for hundreds of years. What do we wear, and why do we wear it? These are not solved equations, you dolts! There are so very many places we can go, if we can just think about the bodies were are beautifying with the same reverence we use to select our methods of achieving that. Your... cut cookie designs bore me."

The screens have all gone back to normal, except one small one near the bar. The music is fading back into the normal fare for the venue. Mayze is very nearly done making her speech. Mirror hastily unbuttons her suit jacket.

"And, when you are brave enough to put the body ahead of your own sense of cleverness? You can do [i]this.[/i]"

Mirror breaks into a run and leaps high into the air, tossing the last scraps of her suit across the trail of her flip behind her. She lands center stage, and stands there lit up in the flood of three different spotlights, arms spread, fur patterns exposed for all to see.

She is adorned in flowers. Only in flowers. Great, five-petaled blossoms spread open across her stomach and over her chest with a delicate grip as if they were her lovers. Each petal is so soft and so delicate that the eye can almost see through it without straining, painting her fur in soft purples and pinks, yellows and greens. They follow the specific contours of her body perfectly along the crossing white ribbons that hold them together like vines. 

The petals spread across her body with only the barest concessions to modesty. Each of her most distinctive spot markings have been accounted for in the growth. Her breasts, her hips, her legs, and her butt are all displayed prominently, kissed around the edges by flower petals instead of being covered by them, with her ribbon-vines instead slipping just enough to keep her from needing to be thrown out of the show. Sweet perfumes waft from her with each and every swaying step she takes. 

This dress has taken into account not just one body, but two. It is a piece meant to enhance her own attraction, but also lift the beauty of the natural world to this house called Fashion. Hybrasillians and especially well read aliens will instantly realize, if they can turn their brains on long enough to think, that she (that Mayze) would have needed to coax these flowers along the guiding ribbons and her models' body over the course of many dedicated months or even years. Each dress made, if you sold it, would be grown to the person wearing it. It would be subject to the whims of the individual flowers chosen for the task. It would be subject to if the person had prominent stripes or spots, if they had freckles on their skin, if they were light or dark or what manners of luster their scales were burnished with, and where that shone the brightest. No two would ever be the same. 

She is wearing Home. Delicate petals flutter across her fur, seeming so delicate but never breaking no matter how she moves. Mirror flips across the stage in a cartwheel into backflip to prove the point. She lands on her black sandals and the petals all fold closed into bud, baring whole new sections of her body to the crowd to be admired. She swishes her tail behind her with amusement. Her eyes devour the crowd and its reaction. And then, with the briefest of shudders, the flowers bloom again in a new set of colors. Now they are gold and crimson, fuchsia, orange, and each one draped across a different pattern in her fur. It's not fashion for the feint of heart. Only the confident and pure hearted need apply. 

But if you are bold? Then it doesn't matter the shape of your body. No matter your lumps or scars, if you are carrying too much weight or two little, short, tall, or some awkward middle, the flowers can be taught to accommodate you. All they need is time. If you are brave and beautiful inside, Mayze Szerpaws will raise your outside to match. She promises. 

Mirror takes a bow, stepping into the gesture with a sweep of her bare leg. The show is ending, but the night is young. Did they see? Did they? Did they understand? The eyes looking at her. The mouths, flapping words into the air. What are they saying?