ISAT headcanons #001: how the years are calculated (because the georgian calendar is boring)
Vaugarde is a land of change, their yearly calendar isn't a fixed number of days or months. they instead use the migration of birds to calculate the passage of time, the birds signify the changing of seasons. each month is named after the birds that migrate during its time, and whether they migrate north or south, since the months are all the changing, numbering their days is impossible, and so people celebrate their birthday when the month arrives instead of a specific day in the month. a month can last a day if two flocks of birds happen to migrate one after the other, or they can even happen simultaneously.
when the king froze the entire country in time, he froze the animals as well as the people, which means the birds could not migrate anymore, and so the months wouldn't pass.
Ka Bue use a very similar calendar to the georgian one, yes I said it's boring but they're the type of people to decide that calculating a year by the rotations of the earth around the Sun is "more correct". they have 13 months, each with exactly 28 days, for a total of 364 days, with an extra 1 monthless day of celebration. every 28 years they add an extra week to the monthless celebrations for a total of 8 days.
with the Island being forgotten all the knowledge around the solar system got erased with it, so the people of Ka Bue don't remember their calendar being about the earth's rotation around the Sun, all they remember is a myth about it. the myth talks about an empress of ancient times who was so in tune with the world that her period cycle would dictate the cycle of months, and every year on her birthday her period would wait a day for the celebrations. on her 28th birthday she was to get married, and so her period waited until the entire celebration was over to resume its cycle. the monthless days are called Empress Days.
the Forgotten Island's people were most likely sailors, they had to be if they wanted to have relationships and trades with neighboring nations, therefore I think their calendars revolved around the moon, as it affects the tides (not me casually projecting Judaism on Siffrin's culture lmao).
due to the Island's extreme weather conditions, summer and winter would not often start at the same time, and the Islanders had little to no reason to keep track of the seasons as their agriculture was limited to greenhouses with controlled environments, therefore the Island's months were not linked to the seasons. the months would slowly cycle around the whole seasons, a child who was born on summer would celebrate their birthday on winter in adulthood.
credit for @morgans-dumpster for headcanoning with me for hours, the brainrot is real
feel free to add your takes suggestions or ideas for improvement lol
