I’ve been scratching my head over this photo all day.

It’s easy to accept her when she’s in the room with you. You don’t even think to question it. She’s clearly as real as you are.

But in a still photograph, where she’s standing next to you and it looks like you’ve been drawn in two completely different styles? That’s when everything stops making sense.

The photog who snapped it, an effusive woman with her cameras built into a headset, called us “a duo of serious presence.” I never got to ask what she meant by that, not with her fussing over the lights and posing us just so. 

The hand gesture is actually significant. After the photog positioned me just right with the shillelagh, she asked Mayuki to do something with her hand to balance it out. They tried a thumbs-up, a peace sign, and a few other things, until she finally said, “How about one of those surfer hand signs?” I had no idea what that meant, but I guess Mayuki did, because this was what she did in response.

What’s significant isn’t the gesture itself, so much as the fact that she hasn’t stopped using it. Yesterday, before we ran into that photog on the street in front of the pub, if I said something that needed no response, Mayuki simply wouldn’t respond. Today, she acknowledges me with that exact gesture. It’s not quite how humans interact with each other, but it’s closer than how we were interacting yesterday. It’s an effort, anyway.

But this photo. This damn photo. Photos are real. Aren’t they? They depict real things. But this photo doesn’t make her seem any more real. If anything, it makes me feel less.