When a rose is not just a rose

Once upon a time, in a place never forgotten, there lived a very sick girl. Assailed by a cruel disease that sought to consume her, she felt herself dying, day after day, losing even the desire to live. An angel, in all its luminous glory, was sent to her and told her to dream of a rose garden. In that garden, the angel said, the girl would be healthy again and she would be able to regale in the glory of the roses around her.

Although the girl did not believe the angel, she did as she was bid, and dreamed of a garden filled with roses, red, pink, purple, blue, and even black ones. Radiantly lifting their faces to the sun. Slowly, almost without her noticing it, the girl began to will herself to live so, one day, she could walk in the rose garden of her dreams.

In what seems like a lifetime later, faraway across the ocean from the place of her first dreams of life, the girl, now a woman, walks in her garden, festooned with glorious roses, radiantly lifting their faces to the sun, and she is joyful.