The marigolds had been thoroughly undone by the drought, barely growing at all and producing so few flowers on top of that that the annual Marigold Festival held in downtown Jubilation had to stoop to purchasing flowers from Chile. Live marigolds had traditionally been used to adorn decorations all over downtown, but with so few flowers available it was decided to use plastic flowers for everything guests wouldn’t see close up. So every lamppost along the Marigold Mile was decorated in plastic, as were the floats, the reviewing stands, and most of the buildings. Only the bouquets available for purchase or given as prizes had real flowers, and most of those were Chilean besides.

But the October timing for the Marigold Festival proved misleading. Jubilation broke all temperature records that weekend, with the mercury hovering around 95˚ in the shade. The cheap plastic marigolds began to melt in the intense heat, softening and sagging and in some cases literally dripping and running like tallow. Jubilation’s city council had hoped that the plastic stopgaps would go unnoticed, but once they began oozing, it was all anyone could see.

Eventually, the melting marigolds caused much of the planned festivities to be canceled, with the usual economic boost to the town offset by the costs of cleanup and ordering the faux flowers in the first place. A few vendors nevertheless wound up collecting the plastid runoff and re-pressing it into souvenirs, the first-ever Jubliation Marigold Money.

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