Trecena 4 opens on 1 Xochitl, the flower, under the patronage of Huehuecoyotl, the old, old coyote, a trickster god of music, dance and mischief whose feasts and song contests Sahagun's informants describe as occasions of real license, a deity who shares Tezcatlipoca's taste for testing human vanity through pranks and reversals of fortune.
Sahagun reads the flower week as double edged: its children were born to be makers, singers, embroiderers, painters and craftsmen of every kind, gifted with the artistry the flower sign itself signified across Mesoamerican thought, and their talent prospered while they worked but failed the moment they gave themselves over to pleasure rather than discipline, a warning folded directly into an otherwise generous augury. This double reading mirrors Huehuecoyotl's own character as patron: a trickster god presiding over artists risked handing his charges his own weakness for indulgence alongside his gift for invention, and the readers' craft made that risk explicit rather than leaving it implied. The trecena's position as the fourth in the count, following the difficult jaguar week and the milder deer week, gave it a distinctive reputation among the tonalpouhque as the artists' week, sought out deliberately by families hoping for a child gifted in the crafts the flower sign favoured.