I said in chat that I would make a post about this.
For my fic Sanctuary and other fics in that same universe I have come up with a Cephiran calendar. It’s very simple and basic, but means that I have a very good reason for the New Year festival to have been at a time the girls couldn’t attend until the year before.
Basically, I have given Cephiro a 365 day year. Though, you might technically say it is a 364 day year with a bonus day.
Weeks are still seven nights. The days translate very simply to Firstday, Secondday, Thirdday, Fourthday, Fifthday, Sixthday, and Seventhday. I haven’t decided if the reckoning is from sunrise or sunset or an arbitrary time in the middle somewhere (like midnight).
There are 13 months of 4 weeks (28 days) each. I have yet to work out what the months are called right now. I’m guessing things having to do with the agricultural industries, perhaps. Or they could just be numbers. We’ll see what I decide before Clef starts dropping month names in about six or seven chapters time.
The festival day part of a three day festival thing. Every thing in the country sort of stops. There are parties and celebrations all over. The biggest being the one held at the castle.
Festival:
Day 1: The last day of the last month. It is the celebration for the end of the year, and everything that happened. There is always a big party of some sort. And at the castle, you have that year’s chronicle scroll unrolled around the great hall turned ball room with lots of dancing and celebration before it is rolled back up. There is lots of talk about the bits that people read while the chronicle was unrolled, if it was interesting.
Day 2: Is the Festival day. The festival day itself is for general revelry. It tends to be an excuse for many to cut loose and have a good time. It is the wildest night of any of the celebrations. Lots of alcohol, lots of dancing, lots of enjoying the night and company it brings.
Day 3: The first day of the first month of the new year. It is a time for looking ahead toward the connections to be made and things to be done in the new year. This is the time when people start making plans about what they want their new year to be. The new chronicle scroll is started and the year begins anew. It is also a time to gain a blessing or a prayer on your house and family. I haven’t worked out exactly how temples and shrines work in this cephiro, so bear with me while I work that out?
Added bonus fun of the festival day not being counted into the year or week specifically, means that the days of the week keep shifting between Earth and Cephiro. Like for one Cephiran year Firstday may correspond with Sunday, then after the New year begins, Firstday is now on the same day as Monday on Earth. Meaning the activities everyone is doing in Cephiro shifts.
Like if Council meetings are the first and second Sixthday of the month, then they were on Friday between March - 1st half of Nov 1996 according to my reckoning, and after the Festival (which was the first time the actual festival day fell on a Sunday while the girls were visiting) Sixthday is now Saturday, so council meetings happen then, changing Sunday visits because the week shifted, but not everyone’s work patterns did.