Without prior knowledge of how magnetic flux tubes are distorted at a particular location, it would be hard to tell apart the emission produced by the two scenarios sketched in this figure. The first one is a result of several small-scale events that supply the corona with hot plasma; they are small enough to stay unresolved (or barely resolved) at the apex, and the plasma they supply is dense enough so that the structure is visible even with a low filling factor. The second scenario is a result of a single coherent event, but the flux tube in which this event is embedded gets elongated at the apex; such an event might not be much smaller than the perceived width of the structure at the apex. As the edges of the flux tube might not, in general, be smooth, the fluctuations in the line-of-sight depth might produce small "ripples" in the otherwise resolved structure.