One morning, a seed that no one had planted began to grow on the prince's planet. He watched it very carefully. He thought it might be a new kind of baobab. But it was not. It was a flower, and she took her time. She chose her colors slowly. She arranged her petals one by one. She did not want to come out into the world all rumpled, like a poppy.

And when, at last, she opened, she said: Ah! I am scarcely awake. Forgive me. I am still all untidy.

The prince could not help admiring her. She was very beautiful.

But she was also a little proud. She asked him for a screen against the draft. She asked him for a glass globe at night. She told him she had four thorns, so he had better not worry about tigers. She coughed twice, to make him feel bad.

The prince, who was young, tried very hard to love her. But he did not yet know how. He listened too much to her words and not enough to the small things she did for him. So one day, he left.

Later, far away, he would understand. What made his rose so important was not the things she said. It was the water he had given her, and the glass globe, and the screen against the wind, and the mornings he had spent with her. Time, he would learn, is the real gift. It is what turns an ordinary flower into your flower.

You are not at all like my rose. As yet you are nothing. No one has tamed you, and you have tamed no one.