Once upon a time there was a war against facism, and in that war there was a pilot named Saint Exupéry. And as it so happens, this pilot was also a photographer, and a watercolor painter, and a writer. One day he wrote a book so true that it came to life, and he disappeared into the desert inside of it, and was never seen again.

No, that’s too factual to be true. Let me start again. Once upon a time there was a little boy, a prince who lived on a tiny planet covered with baobab trees the shape of mushroom clouds, and a single red rose. The boy made an epic journey across a hundred stars to discover the meaning of life, only to discover that the meaning was love, and that he had left his own love behind. He longed to return to his little planet and dedicated his life to the rose forever. But first he needed a snake’s venom to open the path.

Wait, no, that’s only the surface.

Once upon a time there was a garden full of every kind of plant and animal, and in that garden there lived a little girl. She knew the name of every flower in the garden, but there was one strange fruit she could not recognize. So she went on a terrible quest to find the serpent who guarded this secret name, and in the end she exchanged her own immortality for the wisdom to recognize evil when she saw it.

And that’s how the story goes: once upon a time there was a great war and it gave birth to a book that devoured its writer, and to a flower that fell in love, and to a child in need of a snake.