Moss and Rose

This story begins in the spring, when Nature is awakening from her long winter sleep, and all plants raise their green heads up and open their eye-flowers to invigorating rays of the Sun.
All this happened in a large and very beautiful garden. There were growing alongside high, mighty trees with spacious crowns and slender needles of young, fresh-green grass, which has just leaned out of the ground; striking bright-yellow little suns of dandelions and noble tulips; variegated Queen-Sofia-marigolds and humble imperceptible bindweed; lilac, exhaling all around its fresh spring smell and self-enamored narcissuses.
In this motley diversity of fragrant in all possible ways herbs, flowers, shrubs and trees, there one day appeared a new dweller. She had a dense green stalk and notched leaves, in fives on each twig, but what amazed the others most of all was that were long and very sharp thorns all over the stalk and even on the leaves. None of her neighbors had such a strange adornment, and they all wondered why such a tender creature had to have such a menacing weapon.
 This was Rose. At first she didn't show signs of life, perhaps she hadn't come to herself yet, after the winter sleep. But then she moved a little, speeding up her frozen sap in her green streaks, and she started straightening her five-leaved twigs, stretching herself and yawning sweetly.
"A-a-a-ah, good morning," she drawled.
As everyone knows, plants have very delicate hearing, and of course their keen ears caught capricious notes in her voice. But they didn't pay attention to it, because all plants are kind by nature, and so the other members of her amicable green family decided that they could forgive Rose this inoffensive weakness.
"Good morning!" answered first the Old Wise Oak. "How did you sleep?"
"Could be better, but what can you do – no matter where you're born, you must humble yourself to the conditions life has given to you. You wouldn't move to another garden, would you?" She laughed at her own joke, but nobody shared her fun.
"And just what do you dislike about our garden?" said the Marigolds, sounding offended. "We've lived here for many years already, it's our homeland, and we love this place!"
"Oh, sure," Rose replied suddenly, "I didn't mean to offend your patriotic feelings."
"Yes, yes, surely," Bindweed flatteringly picked up, Rose meant something completely different."
"What exactly did you mean then? Satisfy our curiosity," Marigolds insisted.
"Well…. I….. Oh, I feel somehow giddy…."
"You must be cold; it's still cold at nights. Let me cover your roots, to warm you up a bit," Rose heard a low voice from beneath.
She looked down and saw Moss, which covered the ground around her with a velvet carpet. But he was so small, and there were no flowers on him, so Rose didn't pay any attention to him.
"You simply miss the Sun," observed Lilac. "You're growing near the wall."
"The Sun?" Rose repeated. "What's that?"
"Ha-ha-ha!" Dandelions laughed. "She doesn't know what Sun is. Ha-ha-ha!"
"I don't need your Sun," Rose declared in an offended tone, "I will just live without it at all."
"None of us can live without the Sun," Tulip said entering the conversation. "We all need it, every one of us."
"Well, I don't need it! I've lived without it and will go on living without it." Rose's voice was obstinate.
"My, what a strong temper you have," Bindweed said and at this he even bent his flexible stalk before Rose.
"Thanks," a benevolent smile was given in a response to him.
"It's not a temper, it's arrogance," rustled the little Grasses. "She is arrogant, insolent and stubborn. We don't even want to grow near her," And they all turned away from Rose.
"Why are you acting this way?" Moss interceded for Rose. "Rose is like a newborn, she is so young, and if she doesn't know something, it is not her fault. Tell her about the Sun instead of teasing her."
"Why don't you tell yourself, if you care about her so much!"
"I am hardly familiar at all with the Sun; the cool shadow is more to my liking. But Rose is a noble plant, and the Sun will be very good for her."
"OK," flowers agreed, "listen then."
"We," began the Tulips, "appear above the ground first after winter, before all of the others, and we can see how the Sun's rays melt the last porous hillocks of snow, turning it into water, which percolates into the ground and feeds our roots."
"And we," continued the Dandelions, " we look most like the Sun, for we are just as round and yellow as the Sun is."
"No, you don't! You don't look anything like the Sun," Narcissus declared. "The Sun has a yellow center, and its rays are white, exactly like my petals!"
"Are you trying to say," all of Aspen's leaves trembled indignantly as he spoke, "that it's not you who looks like the Sun, but the Sun who looks like you?!"
"Oh, oh, such unprecedented impudence!" Bindweed declared curving towards Aspen.
"Narcissus is always like that," Lily smiled peacefully, "He loves and praises only himself – that is why he is Narcissus."
"Please, continue," Rose begged. All this time she was listening like one bewitched. "Tell me more about the Sun."
"It gives us vivifying light…"
"It warms us up with its rays…"
"It warms the ground where we grow…"
"It drinks dew from our flowers…"
"We all long for it…"
"It is perfection itself…"
But Rose was very little and grew behind and under the wall, and the Sun didn't reach her. Every day she asked her neighbors to tell her about the Sun, and listened to their stories with increasing rapture.
"How happy they are," she thought about other flowers. "They grow out in the open, and Sun warms and fondles them, completely unhindered. And I am shut in by this huge wall. Oh, if I could only stand up and move to another place…"
And Rose stretched herself up more and more, absolutely without noticing anything going on beneath her. And there, near the ground, and in love with her, Moss carefully covered her roots from the cold night air, and protected her from plant pests; and when it rained, he tried to save for her as much of the precious humidity as possible, saying again and again:
"Drink, grow! You need it to see the Sun."
But Rose was carried away with the idea of growing up over the wall to see the Sun herself, and she never noticed poor Moss's self-denying efforts.
One day Rose rose high enough, and finally saw the Sun. Bright light blinded her, and she closed her eyes. A feeling she had never known before of blissful warmth spread in her stalk and leaves; sap streamed more sprightly in her green streaks; her leaves straightened themselves, and Rose placed all of her green fragile body under the golden life-giving rays.
"So, this is what it is like – the Sun," she exclaimed, after reveling in sunlight for a while. "I have basked in it the entire day, but it is still not enough for me. I would gladly spend many days like this, all my life, all of eternity… Oh, Sun! I didn't know how wonderful it was! How did I ever live without it before? I can't live without you now. Do you hear, Sun? I love you-u-u!!!"
"The Sun can't hear you, dear Rose, he is too high," the Old Wise Oak said.
"Not so far up that he won't notice *me*," Rose cut in haughtily. "Real love doesn't know any obstacles. I will grow up, strive upward, and at last will reach him one day."
"My dear Rose," explained the Old Wise Oak, "even the highest tree in our garden – Poplar, which is by far higher than all us – even *he* cannot reach the Sun. He is unattainable."
"And *I* will. I will reach him and then you all will see…"
But what it was that the plants would all see, Rose didn't say. She had obviously decided that there was no need for her to talk with every small fry in the garden.
"All in love ones are blind," Old Wise Oak sighed. "If they could think reasonably, at least a bit, how many mistakes might they avoid…"
"But then they wouldn't be in love," - romantic Lily smiled with kind lenience.
"The best thing is to love yourself, - put in Narcissus, admiring his reflection in a puddle. "No disadvantages, and it doesn't hinder one's ability to reason. And the best part is – it is always mutual."
"It's strange though," Lily said pensively. What you're saying is not without a rational seed, excuse my pun, but for some reason listening to you is terribly unpleasant."
But Rose hadn't heard any of their talk. Since that day, she was engrossed with only one idea – to grow, to grow up and up, and to strive after the Sun. All her efforts were turned now only to this. From morning till evening, she only grew and grew, and marked on the wall how many bricks taller she had grown this day. Her stalk became very thin, and sometimes she had to lean on the wall, to keep herself from bending in half. But it didn't stop the poor beauty.
"It doesn't matter," she reassured herself, "because very soon I will reach the sky and join with my beloved Sun!"
"Don't hasten so," the faithful Moss whispered to her, "don't hurry too much, wait and strengthen your stalk, strengthen your roots…"
"Oh, those silly old roots!" Rose cried one day, "They keep me, impeding my growth. If not for them – I would have already lifted up off the ground and reached the sky. I would be near my Sun already!"
"Those roots feed you, give you the strength for living, and help to keep you well and strong in the bad weather…"
 Moss explained patiently.
But Rose didn't listen to him. Even when a luxurious red flower appeared on her top, and it was very hard for her to hold it up, she leaned on the wall with a moan, but still kept striving up, ever up.
Meanwhile, the summer had slipped by, and the autumn had set in, with the first cold, rains and winds. Trees dressed up in picturesque yellow-orange attire, flowers took off their petals and prepared for wintering under the snow. And only Rose stubbornly refused to notice the autumn changes in the garden, and kept on dreaming about the Sun. But the Sun became cold; he appeared more and more seldom now, often hid behind the clouds, and there were such days, when Rose didn't see him at all. But she didn't give up.
One night it frosted. Poor Rose went completely numb. Her slender little stalk couldn't keep the sap in her thin streaks; it froze, and turned into bits of ice. And when in the morning the cold wind blew, her frozen stalk failed – and broke. And instead of a majestic beauty, aspiring upwards, now only a naked stump with a couple of thorns stuck up from out of the ground, lonely.
"That's the end of that arrogant strutter," Lilac sniffed. "It serves her right. No need to strive after the unattainable."
"She was warned about what to expect," Jasmine remarked coldly. "It was all her own choice."
"It will be a lesson for others," the Old Wise Oak uttered in its most edifying voice.
And only unhappy Moss, who lost his beloved, was lonely silent. He laid down at the place where the Rose grew, and covered with himself what remained of her.
"You were so beautiful, but so fragile," he whispered. "I always protected you when you were in bloom, and I won't leave you now."
In such a way the winter passed.
And in the spring, when the last snow melted away, and the earliest grasses carefully raised their green needles from the ground, the dwellers of the large garden saw with amazement, that at the place near the wall where in the last year only the short thorny stump of the majestic beauty Rose remained, now a little bright-green sprout appeared.