Mary had been thinking about her journey for days.

​

What it would be like. What she might discover.

Whether she was truly ready.

​

Now, sitting at the lunch table, she tells her friends the news.

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They lean in. They smile. They ask questions.
One of them laughs and says she wishes she could go too.

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Mary answers, but something else begins to settle quietly in her mind.

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It isn’t something she can point to.

Not like a map, or like a ticket.
Not even like the train she will soon board.

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It’s something softer.

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Something invisible.

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The feeling that she is not going alone.

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Her friends won’t be on the train.
They won’t walk beside her when she arrives.

But somehow, their excitement, their kindness, their belief in her—

it travels with her anyway.

​

Mary begins to understand something new:

Some of the things that help us move forward
are the very things we cannot see at all.