In a forgotten corner of Mrs. Hester’s garden, there grew a sunflower unlike the others. While its golden siblings bowed to the sun, this one stretched its face toward the moon each night, its petals glowing silver in the dark.
The village children called it Lunara, whispering that it was cursed.
But Anya, the quiet girl who spoke more to plants than people, knew the truth.
One midnight, she crept into the garden and pressed her ear to Lunara’s stem—
—and heard singing.
A voice like wind through wheat fields hummed:
"I was planted the night Mama left.
She kissed my seed into the soil
and whispered, ‘Grow where I cannot stay.’
So I reach for her in the only way left—
the same moon that watches her faraway."
Anya wept. She’d never known her mother either.
From that night on, the girl and the sunflower kept vigil together, their faces turned upward—two lonely things learning to bloom in the dark.
Moral: Even in absence, love finds a way to grow.