Shelly's beach time: Fashion Shoot

Shelly
The sun was high in the sky, lighting up the ocean waves as they crashed against the shore. The heat was just right! The angle was just right as well, aligning perfectly with Shelly’s tanning blanket, giving her the most perfect tan.

She had recently gotten tired of her white feathers, and needed a change in style. And besides, white feathers become such a mess so easily!

That's why she was spending her time here on the beach. On the crowded and noisy beach. She came here together with her brothers, and her commissioner, Sven. With them here, there was a zero percent chance of her getting any efficient tanning done.

A loud yell shook her from her irritated state. Her littlest brother, Junior, came crashing down toward the sea. He was playing on the big inflatable parkour things that were put out on the water. Maybe he tripped and fell, maybe he was being stupid.

All in all, Shelly was fed up with her situation. Resting would do no good either, the noise was giving her stress and the stress was bound to give her acne! She read that in a magazine somewhere, and forgot to consider the fact that she was a chicken.

Instead she decided to leave for their drinks supply. To cool herself off. Not much could go wrong on a trip to their cooler box, could it?

She was wrong, of course.

Leaking Strawberry Juice DrinkAll their drinks had gone, traces of strawberry juice and fruit pouches left on the bottom of the box. Who the-

“Hiya Shelly!” Junior had rolled over from the sea towards her, soaked and excited.

“Hey, Junior, do you know what happened to the drinks?” Junior must have known something about it, he cared deeply for those drinks too.

“A monster took them!” he answered with a yelp. “I’m gonna take revenge on it.”

He nodded to himself in confirmation and waddled off.

“Okay…?”

Sand castleShe looked around in question. Maybe Sven could do something about it, but he seemed to be busy with Randy. A giant sand castle stood before them. Ugh, nerds. Today was supposed to be a day away from the whole nerdiness, right? Shelly wasn’t up for it.

Instead she decided to head towards a group of other guests. A photographer and some girls in very fashionable swimwear. Their photoshoot had caught her attention. This was something she had dreamed of!

She walked to the photographer and tapped her on her arm. “Hello, miss?”

She gave Shelly a look of horror. Perhaps she wasn’t used to meeting anthropomorphic chicken children. Still, a ‘hi’ would have been nice.

“You’re doing a fashion shoot, yes?” She continued, “Can I have a go?”

“Huh, what?” the human replied. Incomprehensibility was firstly a sign of stupidity, but this time it could have been utter shock. After some negotiating, repeating words and speaking overly clearly, Shelly managed to get a hold of the camera.

She knelt down like the photographer did and positioned it on her knee. It was larger than she thought and it took her a moment before she had a steady grip on the thing. She couldn’t look at the screen because it already took all her strength to even keep the lens aimed toward the models.

They stood impatient on the shoreline, feet buried in the muddy sand. Gross.

Once Shelly got going, she simply couldn’t stop! She was having the time of her life! The pictures weren’t too bad either, in her opinion. Only some of the photos missed the models’ foreheads!

Bad polaroid of girls on the beachThe photographer took back the camera when she noticed Shelly was done. She looked at the pictures with another look of horror on her face. This was a different type of horror. More a look of distaste.

Shelly looked up with anticipation. “Well, what do you think?”

The woman looked down at her and thought. “They’re not… great…”

“What?”

“Hurry along now girl, we have pictures to take and the sun is already setting!”

Shelly waddled back to her cooler, looking down at her feet. She could have predicted this! Things never went her way. She kicked the sand and mumbled.

“It’s not like it’s my fault. Stupid camera with your stupid outfits. Ugh, stupid sun and stupid photoshoot!”

When she arrived, Sven was filling their supply of drinks. Perfect timing! Shelly angrily grabbed her raspberry juice and sat down with a ‘humph’.

“Is something wrong, Shelly?” Sven asked. “You look distressed”

“No, nothing's wrong…” She croaked. Everything was wrong, Sven, can’t you see that?

He looked at her knowingly. “Randy and I got you this at the shops…”

He held out a tiny silver camera. “Junior saw you struggle with the big one. This is a little more your size,” he smiled.

“Thank you, Sven” She pouted and drank her juice in silence, but she knew she could not have asked for a better family.

At the end of the day she took the very best picture of them all.

THE END

Shelly taking a selfie of the whole herd

Written by: Riley van Westen
Illustrations by: Friky
Copyright: © 2024 Regular Labs