The woman ran out into the plaza, her green hair falling out of its ponytail. She didn't care. She stopped in the middle, hunched over, hands on her legs trying to support herself amid her world crashing down around her. Without anything else to distract her, she finally let the tears fall onto the brick, her breath coming in heaving sobs.
When her sobs had exhausted themselves, she looked up, into the setting sun—
"Ow!" Juniper Montage yelled, shielding her eyes from the glare from her car's roof.
Her camera, perched on said car's roof, took that moment to fall on its side.
Juniper looked at her ruined setup. "Cut," she said with no small amount of venom.
"Yeah, I messed up," Juniper said, resting her head and arms on the food court table.
"Eh, sounds about right," a male voice said in her earbuds.
She scowled. "Thanks, Uncle Canter. Just what I needed," she snarked.
Canter Zoom chuckled on the other end of the phone call. "How have you messed up?"
Juniper sighed. "You know the money I had set aside for headshots and screen tests?" she said. "Blew it on a lens."
Canter laughed out loud at that. "That's our curse, Juniper: we can't avoid the allure of new gear. But now you've got a good lens for those headshots?"
"More than that," Juniper said with a smile, sitting up in her chair and fishing her camera out of her bag. "It's a fifty-millimeter f-stop-one-point-eight anamorphic prime. Local camera shop was selling a used one. It's a little scratched, but the lens is good."
"Oh, that's nice," Canter said. "But I also see your problem."
"Yeah," Juniper said, her mood souring again. "I've got a great lens, and I'm putting it on the roof of my car."
"Ouch. I've got a tripod you can borrow..."
Juniper shook her head, then remembered she was on a phone call. "Thanks, Uncle, but that's not the whole problem. I just..." She huffed. "I need to re-do my plan first."
"That you do," he said. "Juniper, you're amazing at what you do, and I know you're going to be great."
Juniper smiled. "Thanks, Uncle Canter. Just hope I can pull myself together long enough to show everyone."
"I know you will. See you at Christmas!"
"See you then," Juniper finished as she hung up the call. With a sigh she looked down at her camera.
"I'll admit," she said, "I can get some epic shots out of you. But I can't be in front of the camera and behind it at the same time." She put her head back in her hands. "Why am I even doing this?"
A spot of yellow caught Juniper's attention. She looked up and spotted two of the Rainbooms, Sunset Shimmer and Twilight Sparkle. Instinctually, she looked back down, hoping she hadn't made eye contact. She tried to look back without moving her head to check, and sure enough, Twilight was walking towards her while Sunset walked off into the rest of the mall.
Juniper kept her head down. Maybe Twilight was walking toward someone else? Best to not acknowledge anything until she had to. Definitely not worth reminding herself of the time the consequences of her own actions were hastened by a bunch of band jocks that didn't appreciate the cutthroat measures one had to take on the way to stardom—
"Juniper Montage?" Twilight said from the other side of Juniper's table.
Juniper plastered a smile on her face and looked up. "Twilight Sparkle!" she said. "What brings you here?"
Twilight shrugged with a smile. "Last minute Christmas shopping," she said. "Sunset heard the hat store has some Man City gear, and Rainbow likes one of their players, so..." She trailed off. "How about you?"
Several trains of thought collided in Juniper's head, ranging from overly depressive to overly vicious. What came out of her mouth was "Eh..."
Twilight nodded in sympathy. "Bad day?"
Juniper smiled weakly. "Oh, you know, climbing the wall of fame," she said.
"Oh? How's that going?"
Juniper almost snapped back with "Horrible, no thanks to you!" but bit it off when she saw how earnest Twilight was being. She let out her aggression with a long breath and looked for something—anything—she could answer with.
Twilight must have seen her hesitation. "That good, huh?" she snarked.
Juniper nodded, deflating. "Yeah, that good," she said. "I wanted to get some headshots done over break, build my portfolio up a little."
"So you can get in a movie?" Twilight said.
"Right. Uncle Canter said if I had something he can show the casting department, he would." She sighed. "He can get me in the door, but I have to earn it from there. Neither of us wants me to get a role just because we're related. At least..." She shook her head. "Anyway, before I could actually book the appointment, I bought this."
Twilight looked down at the camera with glee. "Oooh, may I?" she asked, holding her hands toward it. Juniper nodded, and Twilight sat down and quickly—but carefully—picked up the device. After a moment of inspecting, she turned on the camera and froze.
"Uh, Juniper?" she said hesitantly.
Juniper looked at Twilight and caught a glimpse of her camera's brand name. "Oh, no, that's just the manufacturer!" she said quickly. "DarkMagic is just the company, it's not..." She trailed off as Twilight lowered the camera to look at her.
Juniper wasn't sure what she was actually expecting. She would have expected pity, or judgement, or even smugness. But not... understanding?
"It's the company that made the camera," Twilight clarified, "not that other thing that both of us have experience with."
Juniper smiled. "Yeah, that."
Twilight shook her head. "Yeah, I've heard of DarkMagic," she said. "But is the picture supposed to be so...?" She set the camera down and made a squishing motion with her hands.
Juniper actually laughed. "You scared me for a second," she said. "Yeah, it's supposed to do that. It's an anamorphic lens, so it actually shoots a wider picture than the sensor can handle. It's how the movies shoot such a wide picture on normal film."
Twilight nodded. "So it shoots at a wider aspect ratio, and then you correct it in post-production?" She looked back at the camera. "I had no idea!"
"Wow, something you didn't know?" Juniper said before she could stop herself. She smiled, and hoped Twilight would take it the right way.
Twilight smirked back. "I have an approximate knowledge of many things." She sat back in her seat. "So, if I can ask, what's stopping you from getting headshots? They're just pictures, right?"
Juniper tilted her head back and forth. "Yes and no. They're pictures in a particular style, and casting agencies can tell if someone inexperienced took them." She rolled her eyes. "More gatekeeping, but that's how it goes. I thought—well, I thought the lens looked cool and didn't think about my budget until afterwards. And I did get a good deal on it, at least. But it's going to take me a couple of months to save up for some proper headshots." She chuckled. "Less if I can get Mom to send me back to school with a warehouse-box of ramen."
"At least your dog doesn't have to remind you to eat," Twilight answered.
"I can imagine a dog would be pretty good at that," Juniper said, thinking on it. "I know how our dog could get when he thought we weren't going to feed him."
"Ugh, and the literal puppy-dog eyes," Twilight continued. "Spike's gotten way too good at using them."
"I be—wait, Spike?" Juniper focused completely on Twilight. "Like, Unboxing With Spike-Spike?" Juniper laughed. "Of course that's your dog."
Twilight nodded sheepishly. "It helps that I've gotten him his own account," she said.
Juniper sighed. "So yeah," she said, motioning back at the camera. "I want to take some demo reel, show my range and stuff, but I get out there and I just..." She threw up her hands and slumped back in her seat. "That's why I'm here," she added. "This is where I'd come on my breaks from the cinema to get away from... everything."
Twilight nodded. "Well," she said, "can you put the camera on a tripod?"
"Yeah," Juniper said, "but it just... I don't know..."
"You need your audience?"
"Maybe?" Juniper thought for a moment. "No," she said finally, "it's that the camera doesn't move. I want to move around and gesture and shout to the heavens and act! And if the camera can't move with me..." She slumped again. "So instead of a really expensive lens, I should have just gotten a friend to hold my cell phone."
"Well," Twilight said with a smile, "you've got friends."
Juniper smiled back.
Twilight furrowed her brow and looked down at the camera. "That's a detachable lens?"
Juniper nodded back. "Yeah, MFT mount."
Twilight's jaw dropped. "You're kidding."
"Nope. You don't need a full sensor for 4K video, so DarkMagic uses—"
"Uses the same lens mount that my brother's consumer camera uses," Twilight finished. "Which means it's the lens mount that I built into my selfie drone."
Juniper blinked. "Your what?"
Juniper delicately snapped her anamorphic prime into place. "Dang, Sparkle," she said, feeling the tactile click of the parts locking together. "You do good work."
"Thanks, I try," Twilight answered. She took the drone from Juniper and checked the settings. "Looks like we're getting the picture okay. Autofocus is working..." She tapped a couple of buttons. "Is this a manual zoom?"
"Prime lens," Juniper said. "There's no zoom."
"Oh, well that works." She held the drone up and flipped one last switch. "Engaging Selfie Sensor!"
With a whirr, the drone began hovering in place. It turned in a circle before focusing its camera back on Twilight.
Twilight held her arms out. "Ta-da!" she yelled with a tongue-in-cheek grin.
Juniper whistled. "I'm impressed," she said. "What is that, machine learning?"
"Something along those lines," Twilight said. "Plus... maybe a crystal capable of sustaining a small spell matrix."
"Spell—is that thing magic?"
Twilight's smile turned a little sheepish. "A little bit?"
Juniper did her best to swallow the spike of fear that shot through her. "Well," she said with much more confidence than she felt, "let's give it a shot!"
"Great!" Twilight said back. She turned the drone in air to point at Juniper.
The drone hovered for a moment before turning back to Twilight.
"No," Twilight said, turning the drone back. "Focus on Juniper."
The drone turned back to Twilight.
Twilight reached up and switched the drone off. "Maybe it needs to be looking at you when it starts up." She pointed the drone at Juniper and switched it on.
It turned in a circle before focusing back on Twilight.
Twilight sighed and turned the drone back off. "Of course," she said. "It's a selfie drone." She held it out to Juniper. "You have to turn it on."
Juniper walked over and reached out before quickly pulling her hand back. "You know," she said nervously, "maybe I don't need this as bad as I thought."
"What's wrong?" Twilight said, setting the drone down. "Is it the magic?"
"No, it's the camera being pointed at me—Of course it's the magic!" Juniper yelled, not bothering to hide her irritation.
Twilight held her hands up, trying to placate her. "Juniper, it's not something to be afraid of."
"Easy for you to say!" Juniper shot back. "You and your friends get all those sunshine and rainbows and dance magic while I go on a freaking rampage!"
"That won't happen again."
"Of course it won't," Juniper huffed as she turned around to walk back to her car. After two steps she turned back around. "Let me guess, you're going to give me some speech about how 'I'm not the same person I was' and how that makes everything magically okay?"
Twilight took a deep breath and tried not to take the bait. "You're not the same person, Juniper," she said calmly. "You're doing the work, you're making your way, and you're not sabotaging someone else to get there. You've got friends."
"Do I?" Juniper said. "Because it looks like I'm just using you to get to that drone. And I'm using Pinkie Pie to get those imported peanut butter praline crunch bars that I still can't believe no one else imports." She shook her head. "I don't have friends, Twilight. Friendship's supposed to go both ways, and all I do is use people."
"Okay," Twilight said. She took a breath, thought a moment, then looked back at Juniper. "So you're just using your uncle, too?"
Juniper blinked. "He's a means to an end," she said without much conviction.
Twilight didn't react. "You don't mean that."
Juniper just stood there, holding one arm in the other.
Twilight left the drone and walked up to her. "Why do you want to be a movie star?"
"Fame and adoration," Juniper spat.
Twilight sighed. "You know my first experience with magic was a lot like yours, right?"
Juniper blinked. "I think you mentioned that."
"I turned into a monster, Juniper," Twilight said, maintaining eye contact. "All I wanted in that moment was to find out what magic could do, and the magic made sure it was going to happen. Even if I had to destroy two worlds to find out." She took a breath. "But you know what the biggest difference between you and me is?"
Juniper shook her head.
"I knew I was playing with forces I didn't understand. I knew that if I opened that amulet, nothing good was going to come from it." She rested her hand on Juniper's shoulder. "You, on the other hand, found a mirror lying around. And by the time you figured out it was magical, the magic was already going to make sure you got what you wanted."
"I could have stopped, though," Juniper said quietly.
Twilight nodded. "Yeah, we both could have stopped," she said. "And we did. And we learned. And we grew." She smiled. "And we're still works in progress. We still do things for..." She tilted her head as she looked for the right word. "For less-than-perfect reasons. But we try. And we learn. And we grow.
"So," Twilight finished, "why do you want to be a movie star?"
Juniper took a breath. "Because movies are amazing," she said quietly. "They bring stories to life, show us things we can only imagine. And we discover a little bit more about each other, or about ourselves. Or maybe we can just forget that the world sucks for two hours." She looked back at Twilight. "Movies are amazing, and I want to be part of that."
Twilight nodded. "Think about that." She walked back and fetched the drone. "Think about that," she reiterated, "and turn it on."
Juniper took a shuddering breath and flipped the switch.
The drone activated, turned in a circle, and faced Juniper.
The woman was running, head down, breathing heavily, though whether from running or crying not even she knew. She ran, not caring where she was or what was around her. Finally, whether by exhaustion or some intrinsic knowledge that she was safe, she stopped, hands on her legs, just trying to keep herself upright.
She finally allowed herself to look around. The plaza was empty, the fading sunset throwing the environment into contrasts of deep shadow and rich yellows and oranges. She turned to take it all in, not sure if the spinning was her or her world turning upside down.
"Why?" she asked out loud between sobs. "Why does this happen? Every time I think I'm on the right path..." She hunched over and resumed crying.
Until she stopped. She blinked a few tears away, wiped her nose, and stood up.
"Maybe I am on the right path," she said quietly, but with a growing determination. "Even if what I wanted, I don't—"
She cut herself off and turned to look back where she had run from.
"I can't want that," she said, her conviction growing stronger. "Not anymore."
With a deep breath, she pulled herself to her full height and strode out of the plaza...
...as the camera pulled back and into the air, showing Juniper's exit.
Canter Zoom looked at his phone, the remains of wrapping paper and discarded candy wrappers scattered throughout the room.
"Well?" Juniper said, sitting on the floor in front of him.
"Nice camera work," he said neutrally.
"Yeah, it is," Juniper said. "Twilight Sparkle helped me with her drone."
He nodded, still neutral.
Juniper's face fell. "Is it that bad?"
"I'm really disappointed," he said before smiling broadly, "that there isn't the rest of a movie to go with this."
Juniper beamed, unable to contain her smile. "Thank... thank you. That—that means a lot."
"You've earned it," Canter said. "You've still got work to do, though."
Juniper nodded. "I know, and I'm going to do it. I just..." She smirked, laughing at her own private joke. "Just had to be reminded how... magical the movies can be."
