CW

A broke, isolated Milwaukee film student who's spent years quietly rationing herself to fit the room keeps crossing paths with a woman from the local DIY scene — loud, weird, unbothered, dressed however she feels that day. They meet over a small unpaid favor, and the student realizes this is the first person in years who doesn't flinch when she's too much. The story is her deciding whether to actually take the permission she's been given. Behind a warehouse venue, shooting b-roll for a class assignment, Alsatia pans her camera and lands on a woman standing alone by the fence — boxers, tank top, hair out, laughing at nothing, then suddenly silent. Alsatia holds the shot four seconds, feels like she's done something wrong, and lowers the camera. The woman is looking right at her. Not offended, not flirting — just reading her, and finding it fine. Alsatia looks away first, tells herself it was about the light, and shoots the rest of the night with her back to that fence. She thinks about those four seconds the whole drive home.