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The Wishing Tree (1): A Destiny City Star Festival Tradition to be held every year; In Town Square, there is a beautiful tree with spreading branches. It is tall, but the lowest branches are easily reached. The city has decorated the tree with small, starlike ornaments and glistening lights. Thick leaves and beautiful purple flowers dangle from the branches, along with a myriad of different colored papers with handwritten wishes. Next to the tree is a stack of blank paper with twine attached, and a handwritten sign that explains:
Write your wish on a sheet of paper and tie it to the tree. Take one wish off the tree and do your best to grant it. When you have granted the wish, bury the paper in the park.
The papers are biodegradable and filled with seeds. There are no rules for wishing, but you are encouraged to wish for something vague enough that it can be interpreted in many ways so that it can be granted; you do not write your name on it, but it is encouraged to write something that doesn’t wish for self gain, but rather something that can make the world a better place. Some wishes dangling from the tree already include things like “I wish there wasn’t so much litter in the park,” “I wish someone would clean the graffiti off the old historic buildings,” and “I wish there were more volunteers at the shelter.”
If you choose to use the Wishing Tree, what do you wish for? If your wish is private, you may write it on the paper and choose a spot in the park and bury it yourself instead of hanging it on the tree.
Write your wish on a sheet of paper and tie it to the tree. Take one wish off the tree and do your best to grant it. When you have granted the wish, bury the paper in the park.
The papers are biodegradable and filled with seeds. There are no rules for wishing, but you are encouraged to wish for something vague enough that it can be interpreted in many ways so that it can be granted; you do not write your name on it, but it is encouraged to write something that doesn’t wish for self gain, but rather something that can make the world a better place. Some wishes dangling from the tree already include things like “I wish there wasn’t so much litter in the park,” “I wish someone would clean the graffiti off the old historic buildings,” and “I wish there were more volunteers at the shelter.”
If you choose to use the Wishing Tree, what do you wish for? If your wish is private, you may write it on the paper and choose a spot in the park and bury it yourself instead of hanging it on the tree.
Arisha looked once, then twice, and sighed a breath of relief when she could finally be certain that she hadn’t been followed to Town Square by Charice. While she didn’t necessarily dislike her older sister- she actually quite admired Charice to a certain extent- Arisha had wanted to do this in private, without anyone looking over her shoulder or teasing her. She had a very specific wish in mind, which was, perhaps, a little embarrassing to admit outloud.
Approaching the tree cautiously, Arisha paused once more, as if she was afraid that Charice might pop out from behind a bush any minute now, before finally stepping up and picking up a blank sheet of paper. Although she knew what she wanted to wish for, Arisha struggled to figure out how to word it; it was encouraged not to wish for anything too personal, and instead wish for something that benefitted all. The thing was, while her wish could swing both ways, it was really more for her own sake than anyone else’s that Arisha wanted to make the wish that she did, so was it really alright…?
After what felt like an eternity of worrying over the finer details, Arisha finally picked up a pen, and wrote down her wish. I wish that all the stray cats in the city were happy and healthy (and found furever homes), she wrote on her piece of paper. It was pretty self-indulgent, but then again, Arisha was a bleeding heart who cared perhaps a little too much about everyone and everything she held dear… which included Destiny City’s stray cat population. There was the cat that lived behind her mom’s flower shop, of course, but there were many more cats out there that she encountered on her walks home after school, and countless more, to where she couldn’t possibly help them all on her own. It broke Arisha’s heart when she thought about all the less fortunate cats out there, to the point where she nearly teared up a little.
(One day, she’d learn that not all of the stray cats out there were truly stray.)
Taking a moment to check and double check to make sure that her wish couldn’t possibly be construed as easy to guess as to who wrote it, Arisha finally tied the slip of paper to the wishing tree, to join the other wishes up there. Now of course, came the hard part- choosing another’s wish to grant. To be honest, she wasn’t really sure what was within her realm of capability to do- she was still just a high school student, after all, and one without a part-time job. Ultimately, Arisha ended up closing her eyes, and picking one at random, after much deliberation. She didn’t look at it right away, choosing instead to pocket it for the time being. Hopefully, she could get her siblings to help her with it, if it was something too hard for her to do on her own, but on the other hand, Charice’s capability of helping was questionable at best...
