What would you wish for, if you knew it would come true?

Jewel drove without a map. She never needed one, her escape was not about reaching somewhere, but about getting lost just enough. The hum of the engine, the faint crackle of the radio, and the blur of trees rushing past became her ritual.

That evening, the road curved deeper into the forest. Fog rolled in thick, soft, and almost alive, cloaking everything in a silence that felt heavier than the air itself. For a moment, she pulled over and cut the engine. The stillness startled her it was the kind of quiet that made you aware of your own heartbeat.

She stepped out. The trees stood tall and close together, their trunks stretching in crooked lines that reminded her of scars uneven, unplanned, but stubbornly present. Each one seemed to whisper that survival wasn’t always graceful, but it was still survival.

The fog wrapped around her, blurring the edges of everything until even her own figure dissolved. It felt like stepping into a world without mirrors, where scars didn’t define her, where no one could trace her outline and decide who she was meant to be.

Jewel closed her eyes and breathed in the damp air. For once, she wasn’t running from something, or toward something she was simply in between. Suspended, weightless, unseen.

She smiled, realizing that maybe this was her wish all along: not to escape life, but to find a place where scars could grow like trees part of the landscape, unashamed, reaching upward.

For her, it was an escape. What is it for you?

Author: Joanna