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They were descended from the flowers that sprouted and bloomed from the earth itself, those delicate and fragile remnants from a forgotten time when the soil was still fertile and the world still belonged to the flora and fauna that also belonged to it. Yet they were mere incarnations, similar as they were different from their progenitors: they too relied on sunlight for sustenance and basked in the glow that coursed through their bodies under the force of the full moon, but they had skin instead of petals and feet instead of roots like the humans that took away their home and manipulated their existence with the arrogance of a god.
They were called the Hanabito, the flower people. Born from the Lunar Flower and created in the image of a human maiden, they were both but not either. Beneath the skin and the facade, there were no flesh and blood; all that they were were seeds. Their sentience and sapience transcended those of men but were easily drowned by the crescendo of the wind, by the harsh caws of birds deprived of trees to perch upon, by the howls of the wolves they could not call on and wake, let alone lead to Paradise.
Both too much and not enough.
So unlike the Perfect One, the true flower maiden whom the wolves would seek out and who would seek out the wolves. It was of their kind and yet not; favoured by the moon and with a scent that was both new and familiar that the wolves would feel compelled to follow.
Towards Paradise.
When the men came to dispose of what they no longer needed, just as they did with everything they touched, they barely had to move a finger to accomplish what must be done. Imperfect and defective, most of the Hanabito withered the moment their feet brushed the earth whence they came, their blossoms scattering beyond recall. Few were able to escape, driven by the tenacity of a flower more than the human urge to survive, and even they died out one by one in the unfamiliar wasteland until the Hanabito was but a forlorn figure, belonging neither to human society nor nature in the limbo overrun by both.
The Hanabito had always known that life and the world were but a morning dew, ephemeral and fleeting, and the Cycle would eventually collect what was due to it. It sang of Paradise, of the promised rebirth, when it smelt the blood of wolves spilling and seeping deep into the earth, returning fertility to the land that had been rendered barren.
And yet.
And yet, when it felt the Lunar Flower Maiden woke from slumber, when it was graced with the presence of the Perfect One, the Hanabito was faced with its lonesome.
In its most human moment, filled with desire and envy for companionship even for a breath of time before it withered, the Hanabito betrayed its kind and its purpose, blasphemous words spilling from its mouth as it tried to drive the wolves away from their moonlit path and called Paradise destruction.