Every five years is a leap year. At this time, a single day is added between the 20th and 1st quarter months (10th and 1st Uropian month). In other words, add an extra day between the fifth and sixth years. This day does not fall on the regular calendar, and even has a special name, so that the names of the days of the week will not get out of synch from year to year. The name of the leap day varies from place to place, but is usually either referred to as Leap day or Festival. The second name is more common because in most places, great carnivals are given at this time. It is also a popular time for Coronations, if the demise of the previous ruler can be arranged conveniently enough.
The one surety in all timekeeping is that during the Positive Masculine Aspect of the moons, Anuropia is directly overhead at midnight. During the Negative Masculine Aspect, both Fierd and Anuropia lie in a line in the sky directly overhead. This fails, of course, during the Feminine months and when Anuropia is at the Pole.
The new clothes actually felt rather nice for a change. Jenn simply wished she’d been able to clean up better before putting them on. They’d managed to scrounge up some rags and get some well water to wash up with, which she’d promptly done in the kitchen, but a full bath with warm water would have been nice. The shopkeeper had looked at her strangely when she’d insisted on getting pants and blouse rather than a dress, but Jenn was determined that if she could only afford one set of clothes, those clothes were going to be suitable for riding and any other activities. A good chunk of their remaining silver had gone to getting her and Gastropé new clothes. Fortunately, Rupert could make do with his, and Edwyrd’s seemed in pretty good shape, if poorly fitting.
Actually, Edwyrd’s were in amazingly good shape. Apparently, he had no baggage or other clothes, and was just out wandering the countryside as is. Given that strangeness, she didn’t know if it was any stranger than the fact that his clothes were remarkably clean for having been wandering the countryside. She pondered over the rather strange young man walking a little bit ahead of her as the made their way down the narrow winding street down to the dock. He was really quite an anomaly. While she couldn’t deny a definite family resemblance, the strange coincidence of Rupert encountering him immediately after entering town, was incredible. Further the disappearance of the demon and the strange behavior of both Rupert and Edwyrd were all hard to understand.
For a short while, she had the paranoid notion that Edwyrd was really the demon in disguise. That the creature had somehow managed to assume human form and was trying yet another scheme to wrangle its way in to her confidence. She realized of course that this was completely ludicrous; still, if it weren’t for the fact that any demon capable of doing such things would be able to come up with better lies than Edwyrd and Rupert had been telling, she’d almost be tempted to indulge her paranoia.
Jenn had to dodge suddenly as a heavy set woman tossed a bucket of water out an overhanging window above, down onto the street below. Jenn was quickly remembering why she hated cities so much. The narrow confines of the stone and stucco walls made her claustrophobic, and the crude behavior of the inhabitants, both the ones above and the ones like she was now stepping over on the street, made her uncomfortable. Dodging the occasional garbage or manure pile in addition to the periodic drunk didn’t help a lot either. Actually, given its relatively small size, Gizzor Del seemed to have an inordinate number of drunks. Those drunks probably came from the large number of taverns they’d been passing, filled even at this hour by rowdy looking patrons.
