"I have an apple tree but I assumed it would grow apples the way trees are generally known to do. Kitchens of the kind I'm used to do not grow anything on their own."

"Kitchens of the kind I'm used to have ingredients in them."

She takes a bite of pie.

As does the Prince.

"The pie is very nice."

"Yes, it's very tasty, thank you. Are you... hm... if I finish my slice of pie, and then we leave the plate, right here, with nothing on it, would you expect it to keep having nothing on it?"

"Yes. I can predict with some fidelity the remainder of this conversation; you will ask 'then why is it different, for your kitchen?' and I will say 'because it is a kitchen, and not a plate,' and you will say 'what makes a kitchen so different, then,' and I will say 'it is a kitchen,' and however many more sentences remain, you will end up entirely unsatisfied and I will end up needlessly irritated. Let us elide the whole affair."

"I was going to say that I am accustomed to kitchens that behave like plates. Clearly yours isn't one of those."

"It is not."

Faint noises of pie.

"If I said knowing more things will not help you understand them," the Mother says between bites, "would you know what it was that I meant?"

"I'm afraid not."

"Damn, I hoped you would. Now I have to decide what I meant."

Pensive pie noises.

"I might," the Little Prince muses. "I have known a number of... humans. From the world below. They want to understand things. The way that they want to understand is by knowing all of the facts that concern the thing they want to understand. And – this serves them well, or at least tolerably. Because in the world below, facts are... true? Or they are not true, and that is also a fact that they can learn."

"I was at least before appearing on my asteroid a human and that... broadly described the situation I found myself in there, yes. Does the kitchen only do sweets or is a sandwich within its power or is that somehow a wrong question?"

"I can make you a sandwich, if you like. Do you have a filling you would like particularly? I can't guarantee it, but I can try."

It probably does not bear mentioning that this does not strictly answer the question she asked.

It's informative, at least! "Turkey slices and sprouts?"

The Mother busies herself in the kitchen without another word.

The Prince remains with Annie.

"I know that you do not see as we do," he says. "Can you still draw?"

"Probably not very well. I could maybe write small letters and see them well enough to place subsequent ones that way."

"Perhaps that is enough... but I do not know if a creature drawn of letters would make a proper friend to my sheep, and I had rather not risk it."

He removes from his pocket a yellowed bit of notepaper, clearly treated with great care. On it is a drawing of a box with three holes in it.

"He is only growing older, you see. I think he would like company, but a creature of letters might be snobbish, or ill..."

"Why don't you draw some company for him?"

"I – well, it is embarrassing, but my hands shake. They have for some time."

He draws a bit of the alphabet in the dirt with his finger. The lines wobble terribly.

"And there are subjects I could manage, but... I do not think I could draw a serpent. Even a kind one..."

"...huh. I think I still have all the abilities I had and one of them is that I can give you a healing power but I don't know if it will work on shaky hands."

"Please, do not," he half-whispers. "I will manage."

"...okay."

He exhales. "...sometimes, scars are all that we retain of one who was very dear," he says. "To lose the scar is to forget."

"Yeah."

The Mother returns, bearing a turkey sandwich on toasted black bread with sunflower sprouts and a mild white cheese. It smells of aioli. She lays it down in front of Annie.

"Here is your sandwich. I enjoy having a kitchen. Too many of us do not eat, only because we do not need to."