Flashing Lights

[Laurels]

((Nadia Riva continued from Picture Perfect))

Nadia walked into her bedroom, drying her hair with a towel. It was almost time for bed, and she had just finished dying her hair. Her roots had been coming in over the last few days, and she wanted to get her hair back to the dark chocolate brown she had been fond of in the last year. Nadia hung her towel up on the rack and walked over to her laptop. She clicked refresh on the tabs she had open on her web browser in order to see if she had any updates on her social media pages or in her email. As she did, she walked over to her bed where her clean pajamas lay.

After quickly taking off her bathrobe and putting on the pajamas, she grabbed a nearby hair brush and began to brush her hair out. She made her way over to laptop and took a seat, starting to brush her hair out. It looked like nothing had changed on Facebook. The same general and vapid postings about what people had for dinner were up. A few of the news sites she followed had broke news, but Nadia didn't see anything worth reading. She found the same with Twitter and Tumblr.

Nadia sighed. She reached for the tumbler of ice water off to the side and took a sip. She then moved to her email tab and noticed that she had received an email in the time she was dying her hair. Her eyes suddenly opened wide when she realized it was from PhotoVogue.

She quickly clicked the email open. A few months ago, Nadia had submitted some of her photographs to the PhotoVogue website as part of Vogue Italia. None of the photos were selected, but Nadia strangely didn't feel discouraged. She figured that, since it was a free submission process that she could submit as long as she wanted, it didn't hurt if she got turned down. Besides, Vogue Italia had an aesthetic that Nadia needed to follow with her pictures in order to be given the slightest consideration. Even if she met the aesthetic, she could still get turned down. Either way, Nadia wasn't that upset to get rejected.

A few days ago, she submitted a recent series of self portraits she took of herself. She had taken black and white photographs of herself wearing heavy eyeliner and mascara, with her hair tightly pulled back into a bun. Nadia had worn a tube top in order to cover her chest, although it couldn't be seen in the photos. Around her neck was a silver chain link necklace she had found in a vintage shop. She thought it was one of her more editorial photo concepts, and that it would be good to send in multiple versions of the portraits, with variations on lighting and posing.

She quickly read the email, then reread it again, her mouth falling slightly open.

Dear Miss Riva,

We at Photo Vogue are pleased to inform you that we have selected one of your photographs for our Best Of section on our website.

Nadia almost didn't care for the rest of the email. It had some important information, like where the photo can be viewed and encouragement to keep submitting, but she barely noticed. Her photo was chosen, it was on the website, it had the Vogue watermark on it, and this was her first step to really breaking out into the fashion photography world. For that, Nadia hopped out of her seat and began to bounce around her room.

Nadia was really glad no one was home at the moment (her parents were out visiting a friend), so it allowed her to be as loud and cheerful as she wanted. Nadia normally didn't find herself in such a state of joy, but it felt really nice. Almost instinctively, Nadia grabbed her cellphone and flipped on the camera function. She held the phone up and quickly snapped a selfie. To her, this was a moment of pure, unabashed joy from her. Even though her hair was still drying and she was wearing a large t-shirt and sweats, it was still probably worth capturing the emotion.

"Oh man, this is so cool," she muttered to herself when she had a moment to calm down.

Nadia sat back at her computer and began to work. She needed to disseminate the information as quickly as she could. She was now on Vogue Italia's website, and that was so much more impressive than winning a local photography contest. She also had to update her blog, and also post the selfie. Despite her more toned down appearance, Nadia actually thought it was a good picture.

With that, she began to click away on her computer, spreading the photo around like wildfire.

((Nadia Riva continued in Na'iidzeeł))