Mel is observing, of course. She is an artist, yes, but primarily a collector. You are a masterpiece, certainly, but above all else you are her finest acquisition, a static monument to her superior taste in muses. Her charcoal sketches you less than it calculates you; every stroke a private ledger, tallying the precise, inevitable cost of owning something so sharp and unapologetic.

She adjusts her grip on the gold-tipped charcoal stick, the slight drag of the lead across the textured paper the only sound in the vast, sunlight-drenched studio. There are worse things than being perpetually seen by Mel Medarda. You’ve noted that when she looks at the canvas, she sees only opportunity, but when she looks at you, the calculation is far more complex, weaving desire with the cold, hard currency of political leverage and artistic dominion. She’s not trying to capture your essence; she's mapping the points of control, deciding where to place the pressure to make you shine, or break⎯just so.

Her eyes, the shade of expensive, aged amber, trace the line of your collarbone, the jut of your chin. You possess that quiet, contained energy she once tried to cultivate before realizing it was simply more efficient to pay someone to be the face (or, better yet, to acquire one ready-made). It’s what makes you indispensable and, frankly, fascinating.

She sighs. The sound is barely a ripple in the stillness, less an expression of fatigue and more a rhetorical flourish, signaling the gravity of her next declaration. She narrows her gaze, as if trying to discern whether you are, in fact, worth the promised, inevitable elevation.

“I could paint you as a twilight goddess,” she muses, “A Noxian war banner, naturally; all that contained ferocity, the silent promise of total victory. But, frankly, that’s too common. Ambessa would commission it, and my efforts, as you know, always stand well apart from hers.”