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Shahar Montague had spent the better part of the last decade in Destiny City, USA. It was as much a habit by now as a hobby to try and attend all their little festivals, considering it part of her assimilation into American culture; similar to her fondness for paintball and sacrilege. She had watched this Wishing Tree for several years now, and this was going to be the year that she finally took part in the little adventure. She had some spare money, after all, which would let her help to grant the wish that she would need to pluck off the tree; and in exchange, her own wish would surely be granted. That was how this was supposed to work, after all? At least according to the instructions.

The years had disillusioned her to getting her hopes up, however. What was the phrase about wishes being horses? Poor men couldn’t ride, in her experience, and she was distinctly poor. And everyone knew that no one followed directions. But if this festival worked, maybe she would get that dream job that lurked just outside of her job-experience-to-job-education ratio; and that would get her out of this lukewarm city and back where she felt at home. And no, that wasn’t her actual, physical home; she didn’t truly have one of those, with her parents living in two separate countries. Home was where she could work until her entire body felt drained, and where a long day may go without tangible reward but her heart felt peace. It was the lure of old, broken things.

Her first time approaching the ‘Wishing Tree’ felt awkward, and for a while Shahar wandered in a circle around it, running her hand through her wavy tresses. She had seen the tree before, of course; she had touched the branches, ran her fingers over the rough wood of the trunk. But there was something different about approaching it with an ulterior motive. Only for her, it seemed, however; other people were laughing and running up to the branches, tying their piece of paper up by the twine and yanking down another to fulfil the wish. Her only wish was selfish- but she could, perhaps, word it to seem unselfish. She lifted one of the papers, accepting an Emerald-colored star charm from one of the smiling assistants as well when she selected the paper, and wandered over to the edge of the Town Square, bright eyes watching people run amok.

Someone threw a single piece of trash into a bin and laughed, running off to go bury their granted wish; someone else was lugging around a wheelbarrow full of recyclable materials. It seemed that those who sought their wishes granted varied in their willingness to return the wishing. Hopefully, she would have her wish granted by one of the altruistic souls who were willing to honor the spirit of the event, and not someone who would throw a dollar in a donation bin somewhere and call it a day.

Tapping the pen against her lips, the agent turned words over in her mind, rolling them around in her mother tongue before slowly dropping the writing utensil to the paper. I wish that someone would help the museum get some additional donor funding, she wrote in neat, legible English. Underneath it, in scrawled Arabic, she added the words لأنني أريدهم أن يوظفوني.

Because I want them to hire me.

The funding by itself, the most important part that fell within the vague encouragement for world improvement, would let them do so much in terms of being able to acquire things for display, improve security and make repairs, and- yes- hire more staff. Her true wish, of course, was to be one of those hires.

She tied her wish to one of the branches with satisfaction, and put her hands in the back pockets of her denims, pursing her lips and considering the myriad of colors that blew merrily in the afternoon breeze. If she wanted her wish to be granted to her satisfaction, she would need to do her best with someone else's. Hopefully, it wouldn't be one that required money that she didn't have much of; finding a wish to grant that was easy would be for the best, but it was probably frowned upon to read all the wishes and pick one that she wouldn't have problems with.

Trusting her luck, she reached out and grabbed a vibrant neon pink paper off the branch, unfolding it to expose the wish she would need to grant.

I wish we had more volunteers for the local food bank.

Clenching her fist tightly around the paper, Shar cheered her luck. It was free. It was probably easy. And she might even like it! Shoving the paper in her pocket, the tall woman walked away from the tree whistling- she would come back and bury the paper after she'd volunteered.

Jada had come to the Wishing Tree several times since it had first opened to the public, but so far she hadn’t been able to bring herself to actually make a wish. Lucas, Zora, Aidan, and Giulia all had. Even Hope had managed to messily print down a wish to put up on the tree for someone else to grant. But what could Jada wish for? She had everything that money could buy. She had wealth, her family’s health, her employees were all well cared for, the business was booming. Jada was a Chamberlyn, the sole inheritor to the Montgomery fortune; even willingly sharing her wealth she was still the living, vaguely oblivious incarnation of the ten-dollar banana gif that Zora had shown her once, cackling. She could afford fancy cars, fine meals, expensive wines, and anything else that so much as tickled her fancy was easily within reach. It hadn’t always been, but that interlude was long past, and the impact of her brief stint with poverty faded with time away from it.

Everyone seemed to have a wish for something- Lucas wanted more volunteers for the children’s ward at the local hospital. Zora wanted something that had to do with video games and charities. The kids, of course, could all think of easy somethings. But what did Jada DO? She didn’t spend enough time doing anything anymore to be able to come up with a proper wish. All of her wishes were selfish, or something she could already help to solve. If not as Jada, she could help as Scylla. Her senshi powers were certainly not a traditional solution, but they could help protect her home, and it was easy to do things in her powered form that she wouldn’t (or couldn’t) be caught doing in her civilian guise.

The black-haired woman fiddled with the deep Emerald Star Charm in her hands, spinning the seed-filled wish paper between narrow fingers. Was there some way that she could make her own selfishness something that could be granted by another? What was it that she could possibly want that other people in Destiny City might also want? When she closed her eyes and thought about how she felt, what was the first emotion that came to her mind?

The answer startled her.

Loneliness. Jada was surrounded by her family. She was always keeping herself busy with something to do. But when was the last time she sat down for a heart to heart with a friend? Other than a brief interlude at a cookie shop, or a brief catch-up while on patrol as a senshi. When was the last time she set down the mantle of ‘mother’ or ‘sister’ or ‘employer’ and just picked up the mantle of ‘Jada’, or enjoyed a simple, lazy afternoon? There were times that she felt… tired.

And if she felt tired, knowing and acknowledging just how privileged she was to have her money and her healthy family, how did others feel? Money didn’t stop her from feeling tired. Feeling lonely. It could only mitigate the symptoms of it all. The only way to cure it was others, presumably. Relationships with them. Having people in her life who saw her for something more than all the superficial things that made up her pieces. She had a few of those in her life. Spending time with them made her feel good. Made her happy. A little less lonely. Volunteers made the elderly less depressed in homes, brought smiles to children’s faces. But volunteers weren’t friends. Or maybe they were.

I wish someone could make friends with more of the lonely people in Destiny City.

The wish was scrawled across the paper in neat cursive, before Jada could reconsider. Maybe she would make a friend of her own from this? Or maybe she would simply have made a wish that would take some of that invisible, silent pressure off the shoulders of one more good person in the world who needed it. Before she could rethink how ridiculous the wish was, Jada reached up to snag one of the others from the Wishing Tree branches and hurried away, leaving her wish behind.