<div class="floatleft">(https://i.imgur.com/hiW13Hj.jpg)<div align="center"><strong>Alizeh Cloudborn</strong> (https://elliquiy.com/forums/index.php?topic=299823.msg14660956#msg14660956)</div></div>Alizeh was staring into the mirror in front of her. She didn't see the beautiful face, the features that were, as half-elf beauties tend to have it, both pleasantly rounded and distractingly pointy in the best possible combinations. She didn't consider all of her knowledge, her training, her magical skills. No, all she could think of was how badly she was going to bomb this. Perform? Oh she'd been insane to accept this. She couldn't possibly. She'd never performed for an audience in her life, even her attempts at telling stories when she was a child had gone horribly.<br/><br/>She looked down at the script in front of her.<em>Dialogues on Magical Growth</em>. A well known, if boringly titled, set of plays written by the great satirist Horatio Schremf hundreds of years ago. She had just assumed they would still be well known today. But were they? Did they really work as a one-woman show? Did all of the very subtle jokes about hypocrisies of elven wizards and how little they'd accomplished with their millenia long lifespans sit well with a modern audience?<br/><br/>She sighed, and was only broken from her sense of nervous doom as she heard a man talking to - wait, it was himself. She turned about in her chair and stared at him for a moment. He didn't seem aware of anyone else there.<br/><br/>"Excuse me."  It was said with all the nervousness and lack of tact that would come from someone who was very inexperienced at speaking to strangers. "Um, excuse me." She repeated, far too quickly. She obviously didn't know about waiting for an answer. A half a moment later she had stood up and walked to his side, bending over near him to get his full attention. She carried her script like it was treasured. The bulky blue robe she wore may as well have been a burlap sack for all the good it did showing off her body - a decidedly poor choice for a performer.<br/><br/>"Excuse me mister, look I really need help," she spoke quickly, her cloud-white hair hanging down from her head as she bent over him, trickling along his arms as she eyed his face with desperation. "Do you think Schrmef's fourteenth dialogue should be changed at all? Is the reference to the constellation of Tyr too oblique? Do you think uh," she flipped through the script rapidly. "I should rephrase the second scene to reference a garden instead of a swimming pool? It's just that, well no of course you understand why of course of course." She muttered, looking rather frazzled and manic in her mannerisms. "Oh I just, I really need to get this right, I need this to go well, I have to have their help, um well, you know what I mean, right?" She just realized she'd been assuming everyone got the same message.<br/><br/>"Oh I can't do this I can't do this." She repeated, about to straighten up and walk away in a fit of hopeless anxiety.