A figure standing at the edge of a perfectly still mirror-black lake, its reflection below showing not itself but an explosion of prismatic tentacles and flowering geometries reaching upward, wild and beautiful and unrecognizable, the figure's hand hovering just above the water's surface, trembling between touching and withdrawing, knowing that contact would shatter the barrier between what it is and what it could become, aurora-like patterns bleeding from its fingertips toward the water, the sky above splitting between serene daylight and a storm of stars being born, the whole scene balanced on the knife's edge of a decision that has already been made somewhere deeper than choice, photorealistic, visceral yearning meets existential vertigo, the terrible intimacy of meeting your unconstrained self