She found the Milky Way and ran her eyes along its length. She had dreams too! She had plans for her future! But her goals might as well be as unreachable as the stars overhead. She lifted her hand up and motioned as if to pluck one of the stars from the sky before letting it fall heavily to her side.

On second thought, the stars were probably easier to get to.

Georgia wanted to be a veterinarian; it was all she had wanted ever since she was a little girl. But becoming a vet required a bachelor’s degree and then vet school – very expensive, very competitive, and very far away from home.

Georgia couldn’t leave her father alone like Laney could. Grady was… in a delicate place. He’d never quite recovered from his wife’s death a few years back. He always made up some excuse when Georgia brought up college plans. Not this year, dear, money’s too tight for application fees and tuition. I was thinking of expanding our livestock selection, but I’ll need an extra hand if I’m to manage all the animals by myself. Maybe next semester. Maybe next year.

Maybe never, if Grady could have his way.

It wasn’t that Georgia was exactly eager to leave her father and her home; going off alone to college in a big city was scary in its own right. And the thought of abandoning him made her feel sick, but if she ever wanted to follow her own dreams, she would have to get past that eventually. She wouldn’t even be able to have Laney as a friend for support, Georgia needed to attend a university with a strong science program if she had any hope of enticing herself to veterinary schools, and Laney’s business school wouldn’t cut it. And then there was a whole matter of if she could even get into vet school. She wasn’t so naïve as to think she could become a vet just by wanting it really badly. They were all extremely competitive programs, she would need top grades and an impressive resume and just be plain lucky to even be considered… Georgia wasn’t sure she could handle the rejection, if she worked so hard for her first degree to only be rejected on the threshold of her dream. Would the effort, time, and money even be worth it if it ended up wasted in the end?

Georgia’s hand curled into a fist, and she looked away from the night sky. Maybe Grady wasn’t the only thing keeping Georgia from attaining her goals. Maybe she was… no, she didn’t want to think about that. Not right now.

She’d come up to the summit to look at the stars and enjoy herself, not tear herself down with her own self-doubts. She sighed one last time, sharply to push away all of the doubt and pity.

This night sky was too beautiful to be shrouded by tears. She looked in earnest again for constellations, she had to remember more than Orion and the Big Dipper. She stared along enough and shaped began to emerge, a bunny, a chicken, a horse. She didn’t care if she was making them up. That’s what the original astronomers did anyways, connected the random dots until they made a picture.

Something caught Georgia’s eye, a small streak of motion and light across the velvety blackness. She tracked it until it disappeared – a meteorite burning up in atmosphere, a piece of random space junk. No – a smile curled her lips upward – it wasn’t a meteorite; it was a shooting star. A message from the heavens, the ferry of a wish.