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Ládo College, Trepûra, Shôrkýnè; 11 Ilvín TR709

“Bookworm!”

Tára looked up from the rutter she had been examining, and saw a handsome young man standing on the other side of the long table she at which she was seated.

“Do you ever stop reading, bookworm?”, the young man queried.

Tára scowled.

“Hêral, do you ever read at all?”, she replied.

“Not if I can help it”, Hêral quipped.

Tára shook her head. Hêral was an excellent sailor, and had a natural talent for navigation by sight, but he seemed totally uninterested in the scholastic aspects of pilot’s study. Tára wondered why he had been sent to the College at all.

The use of Tuzyn's Reckoning for counting the years has spread to much of northwest Venårivè, but there remain many thinly settled areas where it is barely known. Indeed, in some places, the locals do not even regard the new year as starting on the vernal equinox. In the wilds of Huriséa and Quârphor, for example, the winter solstice marks the new year, for it is that dread night that lasts the longest, and thereafter the days grow longer.

Although only tribesmen may call the winter solstice the first day of the year, heeding the "Long Night" is a practice almost ubiquitous in the settled areas of Huriséa. Many fear it because it is a time when ghosts and other dead things may walk beneath the ebon skies of the solstice new moon.

One location where the Long Night is most seriously noted is Bélda, the triangle of land where the Tîrga and Denséy rivers come together. Along the banks of Denséy in this area lie several ancient barrows. The land around these barrows is unplowed, populated mostly by stray sheep and cattle.