The little prince returned to his planet like a shooting star travelling across the sky. From a distance, he could see the baobab trees shadowing his volcanoes, and he cried out:
"Oh, no! No, no, no!"
With a thump, he landed on a root and almost fell over.
I was gone too long, he thought, looking around at the baobabs, which were now the size of woodsheds. At home, he had always been diligent in weeding the baobabs, and he had asked for the sheep for the explicit purpose of eating them. Yet he had let the days fly by without counting them, as if nothing could change while he was away.
He hurried to seek out the flower, heart thumping in his chest. To his relief, she was still there. A few nibbles from caterpillars could be seen in her leaves, but her petals were still as brightly red as ever, and she straightened haughtily when she saw the little prince.
"What kind of time do you call this?"
"I'm so sorry," he replied, stooping down to see that she was comfortable. The soil around her was moist from rain, and the caterpillars were nowhere in sight. Perhaps they had already turned into butterflies.
She sighed at his touch. "I have missed you," she admitted.
"I have missed you too," he said, thinking of all the adventures he'd had, and how there was always an ache for the ones left behind - first the flower, now the fox and the pilot.
There was a small reproachful "baaah" coming from the box.
"The sheep..." the little prince said. "I must let him out. He was meant to eat the baobabs."
"I think they're rather too large for him now."
"I know. But I must let him try."
The little prince carefully placed the glass bell over the flower, and then let the sheep out of its box. It trotted forward on wobbly legs, but soon found its footing and headed straight for a baobab to take a bite.
It took many more bites. In fact, it ate until its little belly was full, and yet the baobab was still as green and looming as ever.
The little prince sighed mournfully and took out his little garden spade. Throughout many sunsets and sunrises he worked, digging around each root, trying to pull the baobabs up. In the end, he lay down on the ground, and the baobabs had grown even taller.
"I have been thinking," the flower said, her voice muffled by the jar.
The little prince removed the jar so he could listen.
"You could put some dirt down in the box and plant me in it," the rose explained. "That way you can carry me with you, and when the next flock of bird comes, we can both travel with them."
"What of the sheep?" he asked. "I can't carry you both. We will be too heavy for the birds, and the sheep might not sit still."
"Never mind about the sheep!" snapped the flower. "I didn't ask for him, and he hasn't done much good so far!"
The little prince looked at the sheep. The sheep looked back. It was still munching away at the baobabs, but, as the flower had pointed out, that hadn't made much of a difference. Even the very useful little piles of fertilizer would be of no importance if the planet fell apart.
Throughout the entire journey, the sheep had been in the box. For most of the time after that, the little prince had been trying to dig away the baobabs, leaving little time for the sheep. Yet, somehow, the sheep had still tamed him.
"I can't leave him," the little prince said firmly.
Moving away did seem the only option left, though.
I can fit the sheep in the box, the prince thought, or the flower, but not both. I need a bigger box, but a bigger box will be too heavy to lift.
It occurred to him that once the planet had fallen to pieces there would be no need to lift anything; they would all fall. Thus, what he needed was a box that could fit him as well, and that could be steered past the stars to a suitable planet.
The little prince started building a boat.
His only material for the boat was the baobabs, and he used the roots as well as the branches, thinking that if he used up enough, the boat might prove never to be necessary. It might be fun to have a boat standing around on dry land...
But when the boat was finished, the ground was already starting to crack around him. He filled the box with dirt, planted the flower in it, and placed it in the boat – with the glass bell as well, for safe keeping. Then he picked an armful of small branches and used them to lure the sheep on board.
"That way you will have food for the travel as well," he explained to the sheep.
They sat there waiting, and around them, the planet fell apart. In the end, all that held it together were the baobab roots, and after that, nothing at all as the baobabs drifted away.
The boat fell. It fell past planets that the little prince had visited on his previous journey, and planets that he had never seen before.
"I would have liked to have met the lamplighter again," he said, half to himself, half to his friends. "But if we land there, we may not be able to get the boat moving again, and his planet is too small for all of us. No, we must try to make it to the pilot's planet."
"Is that large enough?" the flower asked.
"Oh, yes!" he assured her. "There is plenty of room. Vast stretches of..."
He thought of the desert, and fell quiet. The flower would never be able to live there. The garden was a much better place for her, but it was filled with rows upon rows of flowers like her. Her pride wouldn't allow that, she'd fade away in shame...
He thought of trains of people, hurrying this way and that without stopping to look at anything, and of a sunset that only arrived every twenty-four hours.
The pilot was kind, he reminded himself, and the fox. Still, he had no way of knowing if he could find them again, and what if the people he met were more like the ones he'd met on other planets? It would be so uncomfortable, trying to share space with them, and yet he didn't want to live without people either. It would be too much of a responsibility, on a strange planet, and with the flower and lamb to take care of.
"They'll take us in and be kind to us," he said firmly. "We will explain to them about our planet, and they will understand that we must live on theirs now."
With new determination, he steered the ship towards Earth. As he saw it coming closer, he aimed for something blueish that seemed to be water, next to something green that must be land.
It was not water, he discovered as he landed in it. Nor was it even blue, seen up close. It was white, and yes, wet, but it stuck to things and made them cold before disappearing. The boat continued downwards, through the white, all the way to the green that turned out to be trees, more trees than he had seen in his life.
By the trees, there was a row of houses, and the boat skidded to a halt right in front of them.
"It's cold," the flower complained, and the sheep gave a mournful "baaah" in agreement.
The little prince's teeth chattered, but he looked at the houses with interest. They were red. There were lights shining in the windows, and in some of them, there were flowers in pots, turning to see what was happening outside.
The little prince smiled.
"Come," he said. He took hold of the sheep's leash with one hand and placed the box with the flower under the other arm. "Let's go and see our new home."