Arndan Calendar

"Welcome back students, everyone ready to start the school arnd?" Asked Avallar Aixpee, of his early teen students, who were filing in, in the seats of the class in front of him.

"No!" Came the joking response, half-groused, half-good natured.

"That's too bad, because today we're going to go into forgotten history, today, we look at the calendar." A few students pulled out notebooks, some out of habit, others out of reluctant curiosity, when this teacher got enthusiastic, no one really knew what could happen, he was usually about as excited(and exciting) as a sack of noodles forgotten out in the rain... "Has any one done the reading I assigned last week?" Two hands were raised.

"Reading about the calendar, bo-ring... Everyone knows it's a ten-day week, arranged into 42-day months, of which there are twelve..."

"What if I told you, that less than 820 arnds ago, no one knew that was how long it took for Arnd to make a turn?"

"What, but..."

"Yes, yes, Ignaleo Ignalei, yadda yadda..."

"That was nine hundred arnds ago!"

"Yes, and your point?" The compulsive note-takers in the class were writing furiously, while even the ones that had come in looking like they were just off a three-day drinking binge, hopefully not, but even in this posh area, there was the possibility... Were activating mental circuitry, he had them now.

"What?"

"No one did a single thing to change their calendar until the relatively new nation of Kagomei did, in 300AK, adopting, with modifications, an internal calendar that had been controversial... Then, they did a treaty with the Eurani Pact, who thought, well, this is a perfectly cromulent calendar, let's use it everywhere... Then with Loro, then Moniq, each additional nation signing up was a better reason for nations to join in, until Rannick, that island mercantile nation was the only one left, a hundred arnds later, then it too signed, and what had been the Kagomine Calendar, became the Arndan calendar." The teacher saw a raised hand...

"Are the months called the same?"

"Ah, a good, valid question. Simple answer: no. More complicated answer: months and days of the week are called differently, in every nation, to honour local heroes, but the structure of the calendar, ten days to a week, four weeks and two days to a month, twelve months to an arnd, is consistent. And idea why?"

"The Kagomine could get them to agree to numbers, but not names?" The class laughed, they thought it was a good joke, the teacher let them laugh a bit.

"What if I told you, that you just summarized chapter two of the book, all sixty-four pages of it, in one pithy phrase?" The class stopped laughing, it was like a power outage in a dance venue. "What are the Kagomine names?"

"And these track to?"

"What does that tell us?"

"That naming days, and even months, after numbers makes it sound soo boring..."

"Oh, indubitably, but I meant, what would looking at the named days tell us about what the calendar authors thought about the people they named days about?"

"Oh, well Analectaday is about the founder.."

"Yes, so why not the first day?"

"The book says it's so her day doesn't fall on a long weekend..."

"You don't believe that?"

"It sounds so prosaic, when you put it like that... Like why is it, day named after a male, female, female, female, male, male, female, male, female, female? And why only one male, and two females, for the three days of the weekends?"

"Well, if you go back to before it became the calendar for all of Kagomine, then it all makes sense. At first, it was only a calendar for the city of Megamisama... Attested by documents of the period, with only eight named days, and two days called Ninthday and Tenthday."

"Ohhh..."

"But they were not the ninthday or tenthday in the Arndan calendar, they'd be Sevenday and Eightday... You see, this industrious Megamisaman wanted to honour the city founders, first and foremost, and gave Aunkawa Makoda, Vivyen Takahashi and Merlyn Dandelion the three days of the weekend, then set after ninthday and tenthday, and the week started on Analectaday. Then Retkon Kagomé happened."

The entire class groaned, Retkon Kagomé was this particular teacher's research specialty, they expected minutiae incoming...

"Retkon-who-was-Meihomei's reform of the calendar happened at just the right time, for it to be discussed at the attendant Eurani-Kagomei talks for a potential free trade agreement. Which turned out to be more one-sided than anyone in Kagomei wanted to admit... But he's also the one that rearranged the days in the order you see now, adding Harki and Doron, figures from Kagomine myth, who had founded the city of Byzance, according to legend, in a failed attempt to balance out the mostly northern names. Most of his compatriots criticised him for not including the last Telbun-Sheriff of Megamisama, for instance..." A hand was raised in the back row...

"Yes?"

"That's incorrect, Zim, the last Telbun-Sheriff of Megamisama wouldn't have been known then..."

"Hmm, and how do you know that?"

"Because, the title never lapsed, it's still in use today, even though people think the title is now just military, it's not true. The civilian rank of Telbun-Sheriff is granted on the highest ranking non-commissioned officer, a practice dating back to the founding of Kagomei."

"I knew I'd seen your name before, Sephiroth Kukulkan... Your grandfather was a Telbun-candidate, wasn't he?"

"Yeah, beat out by Marhamat Dandelion, he's not bitter though..."

"Maybe a little bitter, but that should be allowed. Do you know if they patched things up?"

"They better, Grand-dad's new day job is bouncer at Marhamat's favorite drinking hole, the The Laughing Fire, he could just refuse to let him in..."

"That Abirnoth? Jade Screen, display evening news broadcast for last night, Megamisama Nightly News." The voice-controlled computer in the class wall-sized screen dutifully displayed the required footage. The monumental bulk of Abirnoth Kukulkan was filling the screen as he did his bouncer duty of blocking unauthorized access to the cameras to the establishment. "No cameras allowed, this is a private event." As he said that, aforementioned Telbun-Sheriff-Emeritus Marhamat Dandelion was leaving, his full black rank tabs a rarity in Kagomei.