The road wound through the mountains under a cloudless night sky. An old highway carried a bus through the darkness, climbing with little sign of civilization. Above the distant ridges, a full moon illuminated the rugged landscape, casting its pale light across the deserted hills.

He sat alone, staring through the window.

University had become a place he could barely endure. He felt increasingly estranged from the people around him, surrounded by faces he had grown to distrust and voices he wished he could silence. The ridicule, the humiliation and the daily struggle to belong somewhere he never felt welcome had left him exhausted. He was supposed to be building a future, yet every passing day seemed to carry him further away from the life he wanted.

Music remained his refuge. He dreamed of forming a band, of finding people who understood what he heard in his head and of making something that belonged entirely to them. But those ambitions seemed impossibly distant, as remote as the mountains disappearing into the night.

A song was playing as the bus continued its ascent. He scarcely understood its meaning, nor did he particularly care. Something in its sound belonged to that moment, to the empty road and the enormous moon hanging over the wilderness.

He wanted to get off the bus. Not at a station or in some unfamiliar town, but out there, where the highway vanished between the mountains. He imagined walking into the desert, leaving the university, the people and the expectations behind until there was nothing around him but silence.

Of course, he remained in his seat…

The road continued through the darkness. The moon followed him through the window and the music played on. Years later, he would still remember that lonely stretch of highway. Not because anything extraordinary had happened, but because, for a few passing moments, the wilderness had seemed more welcoming than the world to which he was returning.

Record Sealed.