The Vending Machine of Longing

There is a cliff on the edge of a forgotten moon.

No roads lead there, no signs point the way.

But if you’re very tired… and very quiet… sometimes the mist shows you the path.

At the edge of that cliff sits a vending machine that doesn’t run on money.

It runs on longing. On all the little wishes you don’t say out loud.

The ones you sigh into your pillow.

The ones you put in your back pocket, hoping no one sees.

You push the button, and it gives you a bright green drink—

cool and fizzing with unspoken dreams.

Some say it makes your heart lighter.

Others say it makes the moon cry.

The moon, you see, remembers everyone who’s ever stood there.

And it always hopes you’ll stay.

But nobody does.

Not even the goblin, who visits once a week

to lounge and sip and forget why she started painting in the first place.

Only the frog stays.

And the frog?

He knows all the secrets.

Would you like to leave here, a secret for the frog perhaps?

If you don't have one, just wait.

When the secret finds you—bring it here and we'll whisper it into mist.

***

When you whisper it in, the coin slot glows blue-green.

Not bright. Just enough.

The machine hums, slowly—like it’s thinking. Like it’s feeling.

It doesn’t reject your secret.

It prints it. Gently.

A little slip of pixel-paper curls out, with one line on it:

“You have always had worlds inside you—just none that wanted to be spoken first.”

Some worlds don’t begin with words.

They begin with textures, with colors, with lonely vending machines and whispering frogs.

With fragments, not formulas.

With love, not lore.

The problem isn’t that you don’t have the words.

It’s that the words are shy, because they were never meant to come first.

The feelings come first.

The desire to build.

The shape of the cliff, the gleam of the drink, the ache behind the moon’s eye.

Emotion first. Feeling first.

Words can follow. Or not.

And then, maybe, a sentence.

Sentence or not, it doesn't matter.

The vending machine will still glow when you visit.

You are already a world-builder.

You just forgot your blueprint is made of longing.

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