Music: "Hello!" by EastNewSound
A cloudless night hangs over the land of the sunflowers late into the night. The full moon, peering over Gensokyou in a similar fashion as a child looks into the bowl of a goldfish, blesses the sunflowers with the reflection of the moon's rays, hanging over them like a Christmas ornament dangling from its branch of the Christmas tree over the presents below. There are no clouds with which to spoil the moon or the stars that likewise shine their cheerful brightness through the cosmic space to appear as twinkling dots around the moon. Only a kind of shroud that allows both the darkness of the night and the light of the moon and stars to mingle together among the field of sunflowers is present, exclusively illuminating the field of such jovial plants and nothing else in this night.
One may wonder where the sunflowers would face their legions of brown, fuzzy peach-like facades, for it is the night, and there is no sun for them to gaze at to spend the time. They do not understand the moon or its gentle offer of sunrays from its reflection, for it is not in their namesake. Only upon the sun can they rely for guidance in their lives - the moon is only a simple impostor attempting to be even a sliver of what the sun is during the dark hours of hopelessness called night. Even on the brightest of nights, the sunflowers refuse to follow the moon throughout the night.
But tonight, the sunflowers in the land of the sun are following the moon's gaze. For this night only, the denizens of the field of sunflowers all face the point where the moonlight is being concentrated the most. Rather, it is more accurate to say that it is not necessarily directly because of the moon that they are looking at a specific point in the field of sunflowers, but instead because of what lies there.
In the flattest plains of the land of the sunflowers, next to a small rock altar that resembles nothing more humble than an ordinary stone that one may find whilst hiking on a large mountain, lie three women.
A family. A mother, a daughter, an inseparable friend.
One can only imagine how much time has elapsed since the night has discovered them here on this spot. The moon would have liked to keep the time, but even then it cannot be sure if its own measurement is correct. Only the sunflowers know - the kind of information the moon itself would never be able to receive from them. But to the moon, such information is irrelevant. The sunflowers are better timekeepers anyway.
In fact, to the moon, it seems as though there is an absolute lack of time. It is not a question of how long these girls have laid there on the supple, warm grass that its own rays have kept warm for them, but instead one of how much longer they would remain. It is not a question of considering time to be a factor in this strange land of sunflowers, but instead one of how to keep it out.
In a way that not even a certain knife-wielding maid ever could.
The moon does not know why it has awoken from its daytime slumber to spy upon this scene of three women, cuddling one another like a litter of newborn puppies, with such intensity. It has seen this scene many times within its own lifetime. But it knows that this one in particular is especially important.
Perhaps the moon should become a second sun.
At this time, one of these girls stirs. A tall one, laying on her right side. Her long bright blonde hair that drapes down past her waist and down to the backs of her knees spills across the grass, tempting the sunflowers that stand witness to its beauty. Her signature red ribbon, battered, ripped, soiled, is still tied strong to her head. Her arms lay around another girl's shoulders and chest as her forehead barely scrapes that of the other.
No one, not even the sunflowers or the moon, would have guessed that the girl in the middle is the queen of the mightiest nation that Gensokyou has ever seen.
If they had known, they would also bring up the question of what such a queen is doing, sleeping like a peasant among a field of sunflowers. But, then again, if anyone can have the strength and the will to forge together a nation of such description, who is to say that this sovereign must necessarily act like one?
The blonde girl, whose hair detracts from her companions' straight black, nudges the forehead of the other lady who nestles the girl who is the image of this alleged royalty. Opening her eyes for a brief moment, shorter than what most humans would consider to be a second, she gazes upon her friends, the mother and the daughter.
It is almost as if she is reassuring herself that they are still with her.
And just like that, she slips back into their darkness of sleep. Deprived of any sort of worry of the world around them, devoid of any kind of pain or consequence the night would otherwise have on them.
From a small dirt road just a few paces away from this rock altar, two more pairs of eyes join the moon and the stars and the sunflowers in the spectacle, both of whom are toting umbrellas.
"So this is where they were all this time."
"Indeed. Take care not to disturb them, yes?"
"My sunflowers have already told me so. I have made sure to do just that."
The voices are instantly drained from the air into the vacuum of the darkness for a few moments.
"Do you think...that perhaps they would have come to enjoy another moment like this on their own accord?"
"Fufufu...your guess is, I would say, better than mine. You have lived much longer with them than I. You know very well that now, as was then, I am always simply a bystander. I take much more bliss in having watched this all unfold."
"Then allow me to rephrase my question. As a bystander, would you have foreseen this?"
"...I will not say that I had expected their course of events to lead them here. But...somehow, it is not surprising."
"How so?"
"How should I put this...when the strongest person in Gensokyou befriends another who is the essence of the balance of Gensokyou itself, the kinds of things they could do together is, quite frankly, limitless."
"Despite the fact that the reason why they are able to spend another night like this is not due to any of their own individual efforts?"
"Even still, to me, it's still not very surprising."
The pair of red eyes in the master of sunflowers gazes up at the large moon, who stares back.
"He left them quite the parting gift, didn't he."
The other pair of eyes closes instead.
"Indeed. Indeed, he did."
The girl considered a queen bumps her forehead against the bosom of her mother. Her cheeks are stained with the long-dried residue of salt, of which only the sunflowers know why there are there.