(Original to the Order)
There were two roses growing in a garden. Each of them was beautiful, the petals just opening, the scent just maturing. One of the roses grew on a bush without thorns. The other grew on a bush with long, cruel spikes on every stem.
Two sisters, seeing the roses, desired them. At first the solution seemed simple -- two girls, two roses. When they discovered that the flowers differed in their thorns, a brief argument ensued as to who would pluck the safer bloom. The first girl asserted her right by virtue of her greater age, the second by virtue of her relative youth. The older girl, being larger, was more persuasive.
The older girl cut the stem of the rose without thorns and took it with her as she went on to play. She carried the flower over her shoulder like a rifle, she pointed it like a magic wand, and occasionally buried her nose in it to smell its sweetness. The younger girl carefully plucked the thorny rose and carried it into the house where she put it in a vase on the table. She leaned over to breath its scent, then sat back to admire its beauty for a moment before joining the older girl in her play.
At the end of the day, their mother called them inside. The older girl ran to the door, holding her flower aloft as if it were a pinwheel to catch the breeze. The blossom, already weakened from knighting many valiant pretend-warriors, dropped a few of its petals to the ground. In her hurry to wash up for dinner, the older girl left the rose without thorns on the table by the vase containing her sister's flower. The younger girl came in behind, stopping to admire her thorny rose, which had opened a little further, and was even more beautiful.
As the girls washed their hands, their mother walked by the table and saw the lovely rose in the vase and the broken rose lying beside it. She leaned down to smell the rose in the vase, and stood to admire it for a moment. On her way back to the kitchen, she took the broken flower with her and put it into the compost bucket.
