SC.2023.29. Tsou Cherry Petal Day
"May your soul be greeted by the cherries of heaven and taste the peaches of immortality!"
"Hey Mako."
"Hey Piersa, hey Dentrag, what's up?"
"I got some free time up, and with the treaty, I've been thinking... I've always wanted to visit Tsou."
"That we'd let a division-level flag officer run unminded?"
"Well, not unminded, I asked, and I can get cleared as a military attache to the new embassy 'auntie' is building. But if I went, I'd like a local guide..."
"A local guide?"
"Oh, you know, we've been showing a Tsou commercial shark where the best Kagomine places are... I was wondering if she'd reciprocate?"
"Me, a shark? Ahahahah, that's so funny. I'm a little bunny, gentle and fuzzy."
"Come on, your Aunt is scary, and some of it rubbed off, I've seen you haggle..."
"Oh, well ok, maybe it's not all gone by now... And you'd like to see something in particular?"
"I hear your people took the Moniqan day of the peaches and made it your own, maybe we could go?"
"That's several months away!"
"Yeah, I can't get cleared to an embassy that doesn't exist yet until a few months anyways, besides, I figured I'd ask you in advance, no idea when you planned on going back?"
"Oh, I simply must go back for Cherry Petal Day, the ancestors would disown me!"
"So you can't be away that day?"
"Well, you can't miss it more than twice in three years, it's on a three year cycle, and you can't miss an entire cycle."
Set between the months of Noniem and Doziem, specifically the first full moon after the third week of Noniem, this festival is centered around the idea that the beauty of the pale petals of the cherry flowers' second flowering is especially acute and poignant, coming just before the onset of winter.
Due to many biochemical processes inside the trees themselves, many petals of this second flowering take on a purplish, bluish or rosy hue, unlike the first flowering, which has the flowers being white, or a paler pink. With the Tsou and Mako people prizing darker pinks, pale blues and purples very highly, this has led those petals to be much more prized, and used in early perfumery, with the Shinzon.
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