The yucca bristles with bayonet-pointed leaves, dull green, growing shaggy with age like an old [5] man's tangled gray beard, tipped with panicles of foul, greenish blooms. After its death, which is slow, the ghostly hollow network of its woody skeleton, with hardly power to rot, makes even the moonlight fearful. But it isn't always this way. Before the yucca has come to flower, while
yet its bloom is a luxurious, creamy, cone-shaped bud of the size of a small cabbage, full of sugary sap, the Indians twist it deftly out of its fence of daggers and roast the prize for their [10] own delectation.

In the last sentence of the passage, the author uses the word "prize" to describe the bud of the yucca tree. Which word has a similar denotation to "prize" but would communicate a grateful tone?

a. award
b. bonus
c. treasure
d. trophy