The mist bursts around me like living starlight—silver, shimmering in air that suddenly tastes different. Sweet. Electric. Alive. The light shifts, breaking through the canopy where shadows had been thick before. A soft breeze stirs the leaves, and they lean toward me, just slightly. Just enough to make my breath catch.
Something that feels like coming home.
The thought stops me cold. Not because I understand it—because Ifeelit.
The path ahead begins to clear, overgrowth seeming to pull back without sound or signal. Flowers bloom in my peripheral vision, tiny bursts of color where there should be shadow. Small animals emerge from hiding—a rabbit, a cardinal, something that might be a fox—all watching with bright, curious eyes. Not afraid.
Almost… welcoming.
The mist winds around my ankles like silk, tender and expectant. Each step feels like a conversation I don’t have words for yet.
I keep walking, almost afraid to breathe too loudly. Afraid to break whatever spell has settled over this place. The trees seem to whisper secrets I can almost hear, their voices threading together into something that might be my name.
The forest feels like I've stepped through a doorway into somewhere time moves differently.
I almost miss it.
I'm so focused on the way the light dances between the leaves that I nearly walk past the clearing entirely. Only the shift in sound stops me—the whispers going quiet, like the forest is holding its breath.
I turn, and there it is.
An old stone well, nearly hidden by vines that seem to part like curtains as I approach. The air around it hums with something sacred, something patient. The kind of quiet that holds space for wishes and secrets and prayers spoken into dark water.
The mist pools around the well's base, glowing faintly against the moss-covered stones. Like it's been waiting here for me to find it.
A wishing well. I was raised on stories about wishing wells, about dropping coins into dark water and hoping for magic. But when I check my pockets, I find nothing except lint and the weight of wanting things I can't bring myself to think about.
I'm about to turn away when something catches the light.
A coin, lying on the mossy ground as if it had just fallen there. But it doesn't look dropped. It looks placed. Deliberately. For me.
I kneel, and the moment my fingers close around it, warmth spreads up my arm.
The coin is unlike anything I’ve ever seen—ancient, iridescent, alive with possibility.
It doesn’t look forged. It looks born. Like it grew from the earth itself, waiting for this moment.
I close my hand around it. Hold it there for a beat. Let the weight of it settle.
What could I even wish for?
I could wish for safety. For the fear to stop. For answers that make sense. For the guys behind me to stop looking at me like I'm something precious they might break.
But I don't want safety. I don't want to go back.
I want to understand. I want to be worthy of whatever trust this place is showing me. I want to stop running from whatever I'm becoming and run toward it instead.
The wish forms not in words but in feeling—a deep, aching hope that I can be what this land thinks I am. What the mist believes I can become. What the guys see when they look at me like I'm not broken beyond repair.
I don't say it aloud. Some wishes are too big for words, too fragile for air. But I make it anyway, holding the coin tight against my chest before dropping it into the well's dark mouth.
It falls without a sound.
The moment stretches, suspended. Even the wind stops breathing. The forest holds its breath.
Then the mist curls upward, just once, like a nod. Like acceptance.
Like the wish was heard.
