The sunflowers began practicing law. Ling first noticed it when their petals started rotating toward the barn instead of the sun, their golden faces tilted in perfect objection to the farm's zoning laws. By noon, the tallest stalk had unfurled a class-action suit against photosynthesis itself, citing "discriminatory light distribution practices" in subsection 12(b) of the Solar Equity Act.
"They've unionized," Chu Feng said, squinting at a sunflower's brief written in pollen and spite. "Demanding shade rotations and carbon credit dividends."
"You fed them the legal compost," Ling accused Arbiter, who was busy grafting gavels onto dandelions.
The godslayer child shrugged, a motion that dislodged three contempt-of-court ladybugs from his hair. "They looked litigiously malnourished!"
A sudden shadow fell over the farm. The sunflowers collectively gasped, their petals rattling like juror summons.
The Solar Auditor descended via concentrated beam of bureaucratic sunlight, his suit woven from eclipses and his briefcase leaking solar flares. He adjusted his spectacles—lenses ground from frozen daylight—and proclaimed:
"In re: Ling v. Heliocentric Hierarchy. The court finds your agrarian operation in violation of…" A sunspot flickered across his paperwork. "…excessive chlorophyll hoarding and unlicensed photonic jubilation."
Ling threw a pumpkin at him. It vaporized midair, seeds raining down as subpoenas.
"You can't tax sunlight!"
"We can, we have, and we'll backdate the penalties to the Mesozoic." The Auditor snapped his fingers. The scarecrow judge burst into flames, its pocket watch monocle melting into due process violations.
Chu Feng's moon plow sprouted parasols. "Worse than the locusts."
"Better," Ling corrected, eyeing the Auditor's briefcase. "At least these pricks don't breed."
The trial convened in the cornfield-turned-courtroom. The sunflowers served as bailiffs, their roots shackling the farm's shadows to evidentiary standards. Arbiter, now wearing a hat made of stapled daylight savings petitions, attempted to defend their case using:
A treatise on cucurbit legal personhood
Li Zichen's triage code spliced into a solar flare
An army of militant fireflies trained in habeas corpus
The Auditor countered by weaponizing the farm's own harvest:
Cornstalks mutated into punitive pillars of salt
The pumpkin patch began reciting anti-agrarian manifestos
Every third sunbeam carried a foreclosure notice
Ling's bioserver scars glowed like radioactive sundials. "Time to litigate like Jiang Yue."
She pried open the music box, now modified with prismatic strings. The melody:
Made the sunflowers waltz in evidentiary circles
Forced the Auditor's shadow to testify against him
Accidentally trademarked rainbows
Chu Feng's counterattack involved plowing the Auditor's paperwork into fertilizer. "Grow something useful," he growled, planting the shredded subpoenas beneath a weeping willow.
The tree immediately began dropping hung verdicts.
Arbiter, in a stroke of madness/genius, convinced the chickens to unionize with the sunflowers. The resulting cross-species strike:
Picketed the solar noon line
Laid eggs containing ultraviolet objections
Successfully lobbied for SPF 50 worker protections
The Auditor, now sweating metaphorical dark matter, resorted to cosmic brinkmanship. "Final offer: 60% solar royalty fees and…" He produced a black hole contract. "…permanent relinquishment of dusk."
Ling responded by setting the music box to stun. The resulting chromatic explosion:
Temporarily blinded the laws of thermodynamics
Turned the Auditor's briefcase into a disco ball
Granted the sunflowers limited liability status
In the aftermath, the farm glowed with uneasy armistice. The sunflowers retained collective bargaining rights for morning light. The chickens negotiated dental plans (worm coverage included). Arbiter wore the disco ball briefcase as a cautionary hat.
"They'll be back," Chu Feng warned, watching the Auditor retreat into a sulking supernova.
Ling adjusted the music box's prismatic strings. "Let them. We've got new amendments."
She nodded to the scarecrow judge's replacement—a sentient sundial with trust issues and a penchant for merciless dawn adjudications.
The moon plow hummed something suspiciously like Here Comes the Sun as shadows relearned their place. Somewhere beyond the almanac's grave, February 30th took notes.
The audits would continue.
The balance photosynthesized.
But here—amidst unionized flora and poultry paralegals—they let the disputed sunlight warm their contested tomorrows.