This is extremely unusual. Certainly something that she's never seen before, nor has she ever heard of it before, and apparently no one else has either. The situation isn't as dire as everyone she's told is making it out to be, at least not to her, and it certainly could be much worse. She's more frustrated at the lack of answers or explanations than she is worried about the state of her garden. After all, nothing bad has come of this particular peculiar predicament just yet, and it's been going on for almost an entire week now.

The situation is one that is a bit difficult to explain to someone who doesn't understand. The "she" in question is a young lady by the name of MoonLily Autumns, bright purple eyes, deep red almost pink long hair tied up in a messy bun, tanned skin, and vibrant clothes patterned with purple, yellow, orange, and blue, the colours matching almost perfectly to that of her mask. She is a gardener here on Piñata Island, and although her family has a long history of generations of gardeners, MoonLily's garden certainly doesn't show it. The garden itself isn't lacking potential, nor is MoonLily, there has simply been a string of unfortunate circumstances that paved the way for her to end up at a place like this, with a garden like this, with these very underwhelming results of her efforts.

She is filled with enthusiasm towards gardening on Piñata Island. Everything about it fills her with excitement and the giddiness of a child. She loves the colour, and the magic, and the plants, and the grass, the sand under her feet and how it warms her toes, the icy chill of the snow and the delicate uniqueness of each individual snowflake, and veins in the leaves and how they appear under the light of the sun, the adorable piñata, the big and the small, she loves it all as if she wasn't born here and every day was her first.

Despite her enthusiasm and determination, her garden has very little expanse. She can't quite figure out what it is she's doing wrong. Her piñata are content, and they certainly enjoy her company just as much as she enjoys theirs, she doesn't over water her plants or dehydrate them either, she buries her seeds in the ground with the utmost care, she feeds her piñata fruit and vegetables and makes sure there is enough space for everyone. She's certain she isn't doing anything wrong, but she just doesn't seem to be progressing.

This was the problem at first, but then the sours started to appear.

The sour shellybean would have been easy enough to handle, had MoonLily not found it absolutely adorable. It wasn't hurting anyone, it was just a bit clumsy and shy, the poor thing must have been so scared after being turned into a sour, it doesn't mean any harm, it's just hungry. All she had to do was keep an eye on it and break any sour candy it choked up, easy. Then once she found out that an apple seed can change it back she was so proud of the little shellybean and how far it had come. Such a brave little piñata trying to find it's way in the world. Her methods for handling sour piñata aren't exactly common place for most gardeners.

So of course, when the sour sherbat made it's appearance she was fascinated and curious of this feisty fanged flying fox.

This is finally where the peculiarness begins, if it hadn't started already.

The sour sherbat had made it's way into MoonLily's garden, and of course she insisted on trying to feed it, to somehow tame it without the knowledge of how to unsour it. Her method; candy. Candy always worked. If a fight looks like it might break out, candy calms the piñata down. A piñata is upset about something, candy cheers them up. Is there anything happy candy can't do? Yes. Unsour a sour piñata. But she did discover something. Something that she thought was incredibly interesting.

Although the candy didn't completely return the sour to it's unsour state, eating enough had given the sour a faint halo, and lulled it to sleep. It was calm, it was soothed, it was snuggled up asleep in her lap for the entire afternoon. She had temporarily tamed it in it's sour state, and she wanted to know why. She wanted to know how.

This has been happening for almost a week now. The sour sherbat would fly into her garden, and for the first couple of days it would avoid her and try and prey on her piñata, but now it's learnt to simply stand under her feet and shriek. It flaps it's wings to try and get her attention if she's busy with something else, it will follow her when its in her garden until it gets it's candy. Then it eats until it's full, the halo appears, it's shrieks turn into squeaks, and it curls up and sleeps. It sleeps for several hours until the halo disappears, and then it simply flies away again, leaving her garden and piñata unharmed.

She loves this little sherbat. She would love to know how to help it unsour, but a friend of hers only says that sour sherbats eat pumpkins, and the sherbat couldn't be less interested in pumpkins if it's life depended on it. But possibly worst of all, no one can tell her why this sour doesn't do any harm to her garden or residents, or why feeding it candy makes it tame and sleep, or why of gets a halo and what this all means.

MoonLily is a lot of things, but a quitter is not one of them, and stubborn certainly is.

She could quite possibly have the most stupid-smartest idea in the history of her whole life.

Seeing as how she can't get answers from any of the villagers or neighboring gardeners, she is going to get them from someone who lives with sours. Someone who spends so much time with them, that surely they will know the answers she's looking for.

Sleeping sour sherbat in her lap, her journal to the left of her, sick whirlm to her right, she waits facing towards the desert.

She waits patiently as it starts to turn to dusk, to twilight. The sun kissing the horizon goodnight, the moon slowly peeking up to chase the stars, she waits.

And she waits.

Seriously does he know she wants him to show up or is he really this slow? Does he think this is some sort of trick? A trap to try and lure him into shame or pain or worse? She just wants answers damn it, this is getting frustrating.

Maybe he's just as scared of her as she is of him.

…. Maybe? It's just another question she doesn't have the answer too. She sighs quietly as the sour begins to wake up again, enough time has passed for the halo to fade. She places it down on the grass in front of her, knowing that it'll be agitated once it's fully awake again and it's best to let it stretch on its own for its flight away from her garden. Shame, she was hoping having it here and with its halo would make things easier for her to ask what was going on with it.

The sour sherbat flies away, and MoonLily is left with her sick whirlm and her journal, her piñata asleep in their homes. Maybe her garden just isn't even worth the reaper's time yet, but even then that doesn't make sense if sours are showing up, right? She's just so confused. Gardening is so much more difficult than she remembers as a child, then again, she was gardening with her parents back then, maybe it really is this hard and she just needs help. She knows sour piñata weren't a thing when she was a child, there wasn't a reaper of sick piñata either… or Pester or horrible ruffians, loafers… things are very different from her memories.

Especially now more than ever.

She sighs again and slowly lays her back down onto the soft green grass below her to watch the sky, hands over her chest to try and calm her unsteady breathing, her nerves getting the better of her.

She can't help but feel disappointed. Probably the first person to ever be a bit upset that Dastardos hasn't shown up to reap the sick piñata in her garden.

The breeze blows the surrounding trees calmly, the distant echo of the canoñata firing piñata to parties quietly fades into a blur as MoonLily focuses on the music of the island. The wind sounding like a flute, the sound of chimes being played by water droplets on leaves, piano notes caused by mothdrops dancing and trying to catch the light from bulbs, a chello echoing out of tree trunks as piñata snore, tucked away into crooks and crannies until morning rises again, and a distant humming like a lullaby to lull frightened piñata to sleep.