The Prince's Momo

If anyone has read "The Little Prince" by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry then they might understand this story better. I wondered what happened after/if the little prince went back to his planet and this is just my little experiment that I went with. I wrote it all in one breath, and I hope it makes sense. I'm posting it on here to see what people think of it, and if you guys like it, I'll continue it. Any and all comments are very much welcome. I hope you like it!

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She was born out of his loneliness. He molded her, touched her with his thoughts; created her from his tears and longing. One can imagine a creature born from such need and desire for companionship to be anything but what she turned out to be. One would imagine a creature whose sole core is to give life to another's need for more to be mean, cruel even. A soul awakened from a little Prince's boredom, to be his plaything, losing her turn in the cosmic order of things. She didn't know quite what it was she had lost out on, but it must have been something very important. For, at the precise moment at which she awoke she felt a great tearing and pulling at her. A deep longing of regret, of something lost, but not quite realized.

She awoke and said eagerly "I'm yours," as if it meant anything. As if she was hers to give away in the first place. She immediately had a great need to belong to someone, or something; figuring that belonging, at least if not to herself, but to someone was better than not belonging at all.

She was called before her time and place, and yet she had answered his cry. She wasn't obliged to answer, but something in the way that he had asked, in his gentle soothing cries and outbursts, he had convinced her she was needed. And what person does not wish to be needed? For when you are needed, you answer to your best abilities. To not be needed is one of the worst things you could realize about yourself. Because if no one needs you, then whom do you need in life? This is hard to grasp, except by those who have never had someone cry out for their company or advice; their help or their hand in friendship.

The Little Prince was a lonely creature on his planet, B612, and having so much time on his hands, with little to do, it had finally become too much for him to bear to be alone another minute. His sole company on his planet was a very small sheep given to him from a friend when he visited Earth a long time ago and his rose; the only thing he loved. Love had been explained to him by the nice man on Earth, however, he still had trouble grasping the concept of it. Because, if his rose did not love him back, then what was the point in such a sad, one-sided emotion?

Plants and sheep are fine, in his opinion, but they were not as nice as having someone to talk to; for sheep lacked the knowledge or the ability to speak. And prince had a lot to talk about, the stars being his solely listeners in the night sky. He had no one to tell about his trip to Earth or the other asteroids. He desperately wished to tell someone, anyone but his goat about what he had seen there, the magnificent sights, the places in the desert, the fox which he tamed. He wished to tell someone these stories, so that as time went by and his memory grew more and more faint, that someone would be there to help him remember his adventures; tell his adventures back to him so that he could once again live in the moment. So, in his desperation one night he had called Momo to life, unknowing where she came from, but the only thing mattering that she was there.

At first, Prince was unsure. How does a creature such as her, being no smaller than him, fit into his tiny planet. The planet was small, and round, and if he walked slowly he could circle it from the time the sun rose on the East side to the time the sun fell on the West side. It wasn't crowded, it was just right for him and his precious rose and the goat that chewed carefully on only the bad trees, called baobab trees, that could turn his B612 into dust were they no destroyed. There were also three small volcanoes on his planed, only two of them being active but posing no danger to his planet. But now, a fourth soul was on the planet. Would it be too much? Would she fit?

He didn't know what to do with her, whether to cry in fear and kick her off his planet into space where she would be determined to float in a vastness as big as his loneliness forever; or, does he accept her as the answer to his soul and accept her as a part of him. For, she truly was a part of him. How could he create something that was not his? If you are the creator, then, are you not the possessor as well? If her entire existence was based on your existence, then was she not the cause of you? And if so, then was she not yours?

When Prince first looked into her eyes (and what interesting eyes they were) he saw himself. Not as others would see him, had anyone else but his goat ever seen him on his planet, but as he saw himself. When one looks into oneself, one sees oneself in a way in which they would like to be seen by the world. The world may have seen Prince one way, but Momo's eyes showed him just as he would have liked to be seen; he exuberated what in his mind was ideal.

From the moment Momo awoke, she was delightful. To any ordinary person on Earth she would have looked like a small child wearing only a green and black polka-dotted dress, having no other possessions of her own. She wore no shoes, and as Prince would discover later on, she would never do so, but her toes were curiously forever clean and her toenails forever pink. Had Prince imagined her this way? Or had she somehow mutated from thought to matter and become her own person in the process?

For the next three days Prince spent almost every waking minute talking to Momo, telling her of his adventures to Earth and six other asteroids before he had returned to his own, discovering he was unable to travel anymore because his only rose needed his constant attention. Momo, of course, from the moment she awoke knew all of this, because she had been inside him, been a part of him, had come from him. She knew him as if she knew herself; his past slowly becoming her past, his memories and thoughts having belonged to her all along. But she listened to his stories patiently, knowing he needed this, needed to feel his tongue against the roof of his mouth making sounds which were foreign to him at times.

Momo did not speak at all, only smiled and let Prince twirl her firecracker hair in exasperated disbelief. After Prince had said all he had to say, he grew tired of her. She only smiled and listened to him, never spoke back. He resisted this thought at first, but it soon became all too apparent that he had become bored of his new plaything. He had never become bored with anything before, but now, he no longer found himself gleefully telling her his deepest secrets of the soul. Her eyes were what tired him most. He became tired of seeing himself in her as he would like to be, perfect in his mind. Could she not show him this? Was she not tired of listening to him? Was she even able to speak?

Soon, Momo and Prince spent their days together on B612 in quiet contempt, having little place to go. Prince took up residence on the colder side of the planet, the West side, and slowly pushed Momo out until she spent most of her time in the East. While he spent his days caring for his rose, carefully pruning it and sometimes even singing the only song he knew, Momo spent hers sitting Indian style and looking up at the sky, at the dark spots deep in the galaxy. She wondered what it was like, having experienced all that Prince had himself experiences. She knew, deep inside her, but she wanted to see for herself, to experience Earth by herself, separate from Prince.

"I want to go to Earth," she boldly told Prince one day. "I want to touch the underbelly of a whale and taste the fruit of India. I want to be like you, for I am you, but I need to find me. I cannot continue being you but in a different physical form." She had been thinking about this for quite some time, and she was sure she could do it the same way Prince had a long time ago. "I am sorry Prince, but I have to briefly leave you. I am sure you will understand once you have asked yourself."

"What?!" said Prince. She speaks! She can speak! Had she been in possession of this ability all along, only having not used it as a mockery to him? Was it because he had awakened her soul and in mad protest she had not given him the thing he had wanted the most? He immediately grew angry with such a child's fury that he could not speak, only felt the heat creeping up his neck to his cheeks.

Before he could scream out in enraged anger and protest to her that she was not going anywhere but staying right there and explaining everything to her, she was gone. He blinked once. Twice. Three times. She was gone. He immediately questioned his sanity. Ask himself what?! Had she ever even existed? Had she been real or had he imagined her in his lonely-induced stupor? He grew frantic and irrational, circling his planet three times around from East to West and then twice from North to South, but he could not find her anywhere. He briefly wondered if she had been matching his pacing the whole time and she was just on the opposite side of the planet, mocking his stupidity. Was she really gone?

Momo didn't know how she had done it, and as soon as she was aware of not being on B612 any longer she regretted not explaining herself further to Prince. She did not know exactly how she had traveled, but she knew that once she had made up her mind, it was beyond her ability to stop it.

She found herself up against something cold and hard. It felt awkward touching her pale skin, poking slightly into her side. It was dark outside and an odor filled her nostrils in a strange way. Not in the way that Prince's rose did when it first bloomed in spring, but in a heavier, muskier way.

"¿Hola? ¿Quién hay? ¿Hola??" Momo heard a man's voice, much deeper than Prince's utter these strange things. Was he speaking to her?

"¿Hola? ¿Habla usted conmigo? ¿Quién allí? ¿Habla usted conmigo?" she heard herself answer back.

A tall figure pulled away the large metal thing that had pinned her between a brick wall. Momo was unsure of what to expect and immediately missed Prince's familiarity. What had she gotten herself into? She had heard that some people on Earth could be unfriendly from Prince's memories and hoped this man would not hurt her.

A round, friendly face loomed over her and her nerves calmed themselves at once. The man that stood above her offered his hand and briskly pulled Momo to her feet, unaware that she had been sitting in a ball on the ground until then.

"Hola, me llamo Javi ¿Que te llamas? ¿De dónde vino usted?" Javi smiled so nicely to Momo that she immediately knew he had the purest of hearts. And he, like Prince, saw himself in Momo's eyes as the way he wanted to be to the world. A strapping, bold, beautiful Indian man with eyes as green as an enraged sea.

"Hello Javier, my name is Momo. I am from a small planet called B612 and I am guessing I am no longer on it. Can you tell me where I am? I think I am lost. I was trying to aim for the sea so I could see a whale. Are there whales nearby here? Could you maybe help me out?" Momo spoke as slowly as she could, unsure whether he could understand her.

But Javi only smiled and excitedly spoke back, "Seguro seguro, usted está en España. ¿Sabe usted donde España es? ¿B612? ¿Dónde está eso? La bienvenida, la bienvenida."

This went on for a while longer, Javi speaking in Spanish and Momo answering back in English. Neither one of them spoke the other's language but they both understood each other beautifully. Just as Momo was trying to describe B612 to her and Javi was trying to explain exactly where in the world Spain was (different countries was a very strange concept to Momo) a loud, high-pitched noise startled Momo and she screamed.

"No, no, don't be afraid Miss, please. That is only my dog barking. He is very gentle and would never hurt a soul!" Javi quickly said, putting a calming hand on Momo's shoulder. "His name is Tiene."

"Hello Tiene," Momo composed herself, seeing herself in the dog's eyes and recognizing her soul in his. "It's so very nice to meet you."

Tiene quickly sat on his behind and gave his paw to Momo, which she shook eagerly in her small hand. She was surprised when he had come from nowhere, but immediately had a fond liking for Tiene. She understood him to be a different species of sheep, one with longer fur and a strangely-set face. And since Prince's sheep had always been so kind to her and chewed all the dangerous plants that could harm his planet, she felt silly for being startled by this creature in the first place.

Javi invited Momo back to his cardboard box across the street to have late cena with him and Tiene and she said she'd love to.

"So tell me Javi, being the first person I meet in my travels, what is it like to be human?" Momo accepted a generous offering of refried canned beans. She didn't want to waste any time in getting to know as much as possible about earth since she did not know when the irresistible feeling would overtake her again and she would go back to B612.

Javi seemed to consider this for a long time, chewing slowly. "Well," he began. "I am not sure whether it is very easy or very difficult. It depends on one's perspective, does it not? Not knowing what it is like to never have been human, I have nothing to compare it to."

Momo sat comfortably on the cardboard box, patiently waiting for Javi to continue. She absently petted Tiene who was lulling to sleep next to her leg, finding his fur irresistible. The wind gently blew her hair into her face and she momentarily closed her eyes, enjoying this new feeling. There was never any wind or rain or even snow for that matter on B612. Having no precipitation of any kind and never experiencing anything similar, Momo took great joy in the wind. It was night in the city and if she looked up she could make out the faint outlines of stars. They were much dimmer here than back at B612, she noticed, yet they were beautiful still. She saw that at night, the box also served as Javi's sleeping bed. So people on Earth sleep under the stars, just as I do back home, she thought.

However, this was not the case. Momo and Javi spent all night talking, only pausing when Tiene stirred and wished to be walked in familiar company. So, Javi and Momo walked with him, further into the city, where she saw the most incredible things for the first time. I must remember this so I can tell Prince, she said to herself about every other minute.

"I once was a very rich man in India," Javi began his story after explaining to Momo what being homeless meant. "I had a lot of money back then. Money here is a way of trading something for things that you want. It is a representation of what you have, and depending on how much you have of it, is how much you can get of other things." This deeply confused Momo, for she did not understand why you would want something beyond what was yours, but she let Javi continue.

"So, I had a lot of this trading stuff, called money, and I lived back in India then. India is like Spain, except hotter and there is sand everywhere that's as red as your hair," he continued. Momo liked the way he spoke to her. Softly, as if speaking to a child; yet not in a way that underestimated her intelligence.

"In India, I fell in love with a woman as beautiful as the stars at night. Her name was Dayita, which means beloved. And my beloved she was."

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