Misty

Misty is an animated short, in development, based on what happened to Craig Scalise, his daughter and their dog. In the film they’re Cap and Jenny — a worn-out single father and a ten-year-old with more nerve than he has — and they’ve been a family of two for a while. Someone is missing and the film doesn't explain it. They get a husky from the shelter to help with that, and she turns out to be more frightened than either of them.

It takes Jenny to bring her out, slowly. Then the Fourth of July, which we never see — they drive to the parade and come home in a hurry, and you get enough to know. What’s on screen afterward isn’t weather. Their anxiety arrives as a storm, in color and shape, because that’s what it’s like from inside and there’s no other way to show it.

Misty doesn’t fully come back until the night she lies down next to Jenny and their breathing falls into step. Quiet, nothing said. After that she starts going to other people — Cap, who takes longer, then a town, at a vigil and a community center. Nothing in it is magic. She stays near someone and after a while they feel better, which is a thing that happens between living creatures and doesn’t need explaining. She has cancer the whole time. She doesn’t survive the film.