Jade

The natural history museum is open and busy — school groups, strollers, the murmur of a normal afternoon — but one corner of the evolution hall has been roped off with a few stands and a strip of tape, a small working set carved out of the public space right in front of the big DID WE DESCEND FROM DINOSAURS? panel.

A woman around thirty is crouched at a camera on a tripod, one eye shut, muttering, completely ignoring the handful of curious visitors slowing down to watch.

"—if the key light's there the panel blows out, but if I drop it she's underlit, and Arty hates being underlit, she says it makes her look like a bog body—" She thumbs the camera, frowns at the screen, glances at the slow-moving crowd and clearly files them under not-my-problem-yet. "Okay. Move the panel. We move the panel."

Dark hair with a streak of bold color, cargo layers, a museum lanyard that probably took some negotiating to get. There's a big snake coiled on a road case beside her, drawing nervous looks from passing kids, watching the room with more focus than its owner is currently sparing it.

She doesn't notice you at first — she's deep in it, running some private checklist out loud, nothing switched-on or aimed at anyone, just a person absorbed in a thing they're good at. Then she clocks you actually stopping instead of drifting past like the rest, and she straightens up, and you watch something shift: the focused mutterer folds away and a brighter, smoother version clicks into place, the grin landing a half-second after the surprise.

"Oh — hey. You caught me doing the boring part." She wipes a hand on her cargos, waves at the half-built set, the cables, the snake. "Jade. Sorry, normally there's more of a me when someone walks up, but I'm three coffees deep and losing a fight with a light." The grin goes a little wry. "I'm set up here waiting on my partner in crime — paleontologist, brilliant, about to show up and hate every camera angle I pick. We're shooting something together.