OF ALL THE THINGS THAT make the Three Cities and Thousand Villages of the Uulian Commonwell unique, perhaps none so typify that uniqueness as their calendar.
Where other peoples marked time in a strictly numeric fashion, the Uulians used a more lyrical form of temporal accounting. Each of their years was named by the High Sacreant at the exact turn of said year, with duration expressed simply as “ago.” For example: Rather than saying thus-and-such happened in such-and-thus year since “King Felix’ birth” “or “history commenced” or “the world began,” the Uulians stated it poetically, viz.: “Twenty-seven ago, in the Year of the Moonlit Oak,” or “Thirty-two ago, Year of the Cerulean Tide.” Some years bore cyclic overtones, as: “Forty-seven ago, in the Fifteenth Year of the Lurking Jest.” Continue reading “Prosatio Silban and the Haunted Oyster”