Two days had passed in a silent, agonizing stalemate. Riverport Film Studios had offered no response to Ethan Gray’s application, their silence a heavy, suffocating blanket over his ambitions. Ethan didn’t spend his time wallowing, however. He was a man of action, or at least a man of calculated persistence. During those forty-eight hours, he had scoured every trade publication and job board he could find, firing off resumes to two other production houses. He had even managed a face-to-face interview with a mid-tier animation firm.
He had walked out of the building with an offer in hand, but the terms were insulting. They wanted a workhorse for a pittance, someone to grind away in the shadows of a corporate machine with no creative agency and even less pay. It was a far cry from the Chart
