March 25th, sunny, with a light breeze.
The weather was beginning to warm up, and the heavy fur coats had already been hung out to air; in a few days, they could be put away.
Early in the morning, the streets and alleys were filled with a faint, sweet fragrance.
It was the smell of Blue Moon Cake.
Legend has it that long, long ago, when the earth suffered famine and people were on the verge of starving, the Blue Moon Goddess, upon seeing the world's misery, bestowed her blessings and taught people how to extract starch from the rhizomes of the Blue Moon Flower to make cakes, allowing folks to survive the hardships thanks to the Blue Moon Flowers blanketing the hillsides.
Since then, the twenty-fifth of March—the reputed birthday of the Blue Moon Goddess—became a traditional festival in these lands of the Jingjiu Dynasty, a tradition that stretches back even further than the dynasty itself.
