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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.


Tristan was, if he was honest, not at all sure why he was here.

Well, no. That wasn't true. He knew why he was here.

He'd dropped by the Wishing Tree for the Star Festival half on a whim, and half because he knew Aderyn would have loved it. An opportunity for her to demonstrate how brilliant and clever she was by helping clean up the city? She'd have leapt at the chance with glee. She even probably would have enjoyed writing up a wish of her own to stick on the tree, for someone else to take and grant.

The problem was, Tristan was not Aderyn, and instead of having a thousand wishes at the ready and struggling to pick one, he found himself staring, blankly, at the paper and pen in his hand. It seemed a little silly to make a wish, especially when it felt cheap to pick something plain and generic like "clean up the park" or something to that effect. He could see a number of those hanging off the tree; some about making the city safer; a few more specific ones--wishes for donations of money or time or supplies to specific charities, wishes for help for general or specific people; so many different things.

The problem was, his own wishes were not so...simple.

Yeah, alright, he'd love to see the world get made into a slightly better place. And if Destiny City was going to encourage that through the Star Festival, good for them. But there was something much, much more personal and close to home in his heart. Something no one else would be able to grant.

It seemed so selfish. So silly, especially when so many other people were so focused on helping the world. But...having harker back in his life made Tristan long for him. Pine after him, one could even say, like some kind of idiot. A schoolboy with a crush. He was a fool, and he knew it, and writing down what a fool he was on some colorful piece of paper wasn't going to make him any less of one.

The problem was, the only other thing he could think of was utterly, completely impossible.

Between "I wish my little sister hadn't died" and "I wish the man I love loved me back," one of those was, at least, grantable in the current universe. Sure, there was magic, but none of it, as far as Tristan had ever been told, could bring back someone years dead whose body was long lost.

So, it was with a sigh that he decided to scribble his wish on the paper, because it was stupid, but Aderyn would have poked and prodded and nudged and teased until he shut up and did it.

This wish, however, wouldn't go on the tree. Before he left, he took a wish off the tree to grant--a request to clean up the park, and there was plenty of that to be done. He set the pen back down on the table, and ducked away, and went to a less traveled area of the park. There, as had been instructed, he dug a small, shallow hole in the ground with his hands, and tucked the little blue paper into it. Then, he covered it over, stood up, and dusted off his hands.

That would do. A simple wish, put into the universe.

"I wish that Harker might love me back."

[wc: 573 words]