#except p. blossom's a swordsman & well... the group is slain

[ovenborn]

Here's a basic layout of Peach Blossom Cookie's beginnings before he became the Keeper of the Heavenly Orchard. His mortal life, essentially.

An orphan displaced due to war, Peach Blossom Cookie does not remember his homeland or the faces of his family clearly, but he has always remembered the injustices he saw in the world. How those in power abused it... How the innocent always got caught in the crossfires of conflict, paying the price of yet another war in which neither side was right... How all that was beautiful in the world would be trampled on with a cruel indifference...

Thus, he took up a sword and began acting as a vigilante from the time he was a young teen, becoming an enemy to the armies of various realms over time — that was how he felt he could truly make change in the world, and what he also found long sought out purpose in. His name was infamous to the crowned by his early adulthood, and for many villages affected by war and corruption of those they were governed by, a beacon of hope.

He is not exactly sure when it happened — when a group of cookies had begun following and looking to him for asylum, but... he realized they shared the same dream for the world. From then on, other refugees would join their group as well — cookies who otherwise couldn't defend themselves, scarred by warfare and tyranny. They were mostly simple farmers and such folk; alongside children, the elderly, and disabled. In hopes for a better life, they banded together and began journeying elsewhere with Peach Blossom Cookie who would protect them.

They would travel tirelessly for a place away from the bloodshed, for somewhere to call home, and far out to the west they thought they had found land they could cultivate. There had been those who were lost during the journey, it was not without risk after all, but they had finally found it — somewhere they could settle down and grow their roots. Together they believed that they could establish a community and build a paradise from the ground up for all those like them... In the end, just when they thought they had fled far enough, conflict would find them again. Peach Blossom Cookie would end up failing to protect them. Every single one of them was gruesomely slain by bandits, the sight of rising smoke and their screams drawing him back to their incipient village in horror.

The last thing he would use his sword for was to dig up the first thing they had planted in order to begin their little paradise — a peach tree sapling that had thankfully been unsullied by blood...

And as you can probably guess now, Peach Blossom Cookie would carry that same sapling upwards to the heavens to start his garden in honor of those he lost that day, hoping to see their dream come into fruition no matter what. The climb was far from easy, though that's for another post.