After Kitalia had taken off her own boots and pulled her pants legs up around her knees, they padded along the riverbank, just inside the water’s edge. Their soft splashes and Kre’s huffing breath were the only sounds in the night air.
Kre had hiked the blanket up to around his knees and kept it wrapped tightly around him in hopes of staving off the chill. She kept them at a slow jog, which seemed to be just enough to keep the blood warm but not quite so fast that he tired out quickly. He continued to be amazed at his Ylveryan companion’s stamina and ability to navigate so well in the dark.
Kre took a brief moment to glance up at the night sky. Clouds had rolled in and were covering the white moon, which resulted in the land being faintly covered in a deep bluish hue. He tried to recall the names that Professor Marxin had given to the moons, but he was too tired to really focus on that particular lesson. What he did remember was that each of the three moons differed in color and in duration.
The professor had more technical terms for it, but Kre’s memory was simply that the white moon went from full to empty to full again once a year. The Tehynshin people used that moon to mark their annual calendars with the full moon marking the mid-year point, and the longest day of the year.
The blue moon was much smaller, about a quarter of the size of the white moon, and it waxed and waned at a much faster rate. Tehynshins used the blue moon to mark the passing of fifteen days with a rising week and a falling week tied to whether the blue moon was growing or shrinking in addition to a full-moon day between the two weeks. Additionally, the term “blue moon” was simply a phrase that referred to single two-week period, of which there were twenty-four of in a given year and three blue moons made up a Tehynshin month.
The last moon was almost the same size as the white one but slightly smaller and with a greenish hue to it. Its cycle was one that the Tehynshins never bothered to sync with as it seemed not to marry up neatly with the seasons like the white moon did.
After that point, most everything else about the Tehynshin calendar system was a recent development by the government and Kre had learned next to nothing about it. It didn’t help that every now and again a new bureaucrat would rename parts of the calendar, which had already fractured when the regions used their own spellings and pronunciations.
Thankfully, Professor Marxin hadn’t bothered to stress the names too much, which helped Kre greatly, as it was the teacher’s personal opinion that the moons were more important to learn than the constantly changing names of the days and months. Kre wondered briefly if the Ylveryans had different names for their calendar and quickly assured himself that they most certainly would, and he resolved himself to ask Kitalia about it when they were holed up in hiding.
They continued their jog around a wide outer bend in the river and the white moon peeked out from behind the clouds just long enough to sparkle on the surface of the water.
“Annum,” he said, breathing the word out unconsciously as it suddenly came to him. The white moon was named ‘Annum’.
He was so mesmerized by the moonlight that he almost didn’t realize Kitalia had come to a stop in front of him. He tried to stop his forward momentum but wasn’t to keep himself from pushing up against her in a moderate shove.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” he muttered. He righted himself and reached out a hand to steady her as well.
“You are one of the clumsiest boys I have ever met,” she said, waving his hand away. “At least this time you were partially clothed.”
“Small miracles,” he muttered, starting to shiver now that his body was rapidly cooling down.