Tears of Joy

plant of the moon Yorok

Tiny flowers most often seen with nine tear-shaped petals, found growing close to the glittering soils of Yorok’s smaller craters. The three most notable source craters are Orey, Oro, and Oke, though the comparatively tiny craters of Koy North and South can, in slivers of certain years, prove pleasing for harvests indeed. 

For purposes of study and story we separate these flowers into two parts: 

• the petals, 

• and the stalks topped with their button-sized centers. 

New flowers are known to seep sachrystline trickles, thus creating a coating that keeps the already-vibrant petals vivid and hardy all through their lives in the harsher environment of Yorok. 

In the days and nights before the small stems die, they weep their small petals; these remain vivid and hardy for years upon the soil of the craters, and years upon years of petals lie upon years upon years of petals slowly decomposing into hues that stain the grains of those soils in mosaic memories of vivid lives. The stalks wither and shrivel where they lie, only for new flowers to push their way through the dead centers come Summer. Depending on a variety of factors for a given year on Yorok, this process of ‘eager birth of flower through middle of previous flower’ can actually occur up to eight times in the first eves of Summer. 

For tisane purposes, only the flowers as a whole are usable - once the petals are wept, they soon lose any flavor or nutrition.

With a floaty taste reminiscent of black pepper, these flowers are known to spark sneezes which temporarily apparently transport the sneezer to other times, spaces, dreams, memories of past or imagined lives.

When foraging on Earth, substitute nasturtium flowers.