The implication of this particular tale is: Trust strangers. Believe in magic.

If you see the magic in a fairy tale, you can face the future.

Magic is really only the utilization of the entire spectrum of the senses. Humans have cut themselves off from their senses. Now they see only a tiny portion of the visible spectrum, hear only the loudest of sounds, their sense of smell is shockingly poor and they can only distinguish the sweetest and sourest of tastes.

The magician seemed to promise that something torn to bits might be mended without a seam, that what had vanished might reappear, that a scattered handful of doves or dust might be reunited by a word, that a paper rose consumed by fire could be made to bloom from a pile of ash. But everyone knew that it was only an illusion. The true magic of this broken world lay in the ability of things it contained to vanish, to become so thoroughly lost, that they might never have existed in the first place.

Everyone knew you shouldn't go biting into fruit offered to you by magical creatures in the woods, even if you'd thought until just five minutes ago that such stories were, you know, only stories.

I suspect any serious reader has a first great book, just the way anybody has a first kiss.