Spring
From Illapedia
Spring consists of four calendar monthes: Elos, Tanos, Zhas, and Ushos.
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[edit] 1 Elos
Elos as first springtime month is the month of Elara. It consists 24 days and is said to to be the month of magic.
The first month in spring was named after Elara, goddess of wisdom. Usually the end of winter is celebrated on the first Elos, because the ice has melted around this time of the year: The ice on the sea between Salkamar and Albar, which blocks the shipping lines along the coasts and to the islands until the end of Chos, melts completely by the end of Elos. The longest night and the shortest day of the year always happen to be on the first of Elos.
[edit] 1.1 Illumination Festival
Every race celebrates the "Illumination Festival" at the beginning of a new year. There will be great bonfires in each village and town and the houses are decorated with lamps and lanterns. These festivities culminate in the burning of a scarecrow that is named "Shadowman" or "Darkman". The Illumination Festival serves as a banishment of doom and ruin, which has found its way into this realm through the month of Mas. In Salkamar and Albar the so-called "Festival of Lights" is being celebrated: thousands of small lights and candles are lit and straw puppets are burned in the streets.
The origin of this festival has its seeds in the scripts of the Nokorakan Cycle, the attempt of a compendium of past century’s prophecies. There one can read the following:
"Flee from the signs of the long night. Beg on your knees for your immortal soul, when the light denies itself in the crack of dawn. For he will rise again from the swamps of agony and his shadow will engulf the world in darkness. On the wings of death he rides forth and where his steps tarry the mortals will fail. At this time only the bearers of the fire will curb his arrival. And their light will shine like a thousand suns to defy the darkness. In the glistering brightness which they ignite, he may burn, lest his traces will be extinguished from the earth."
[edit] 1.2 Celebration of Renewing
The longest night and the shortest day is especially celebrated by the elven people as the "Celebration of Renewing". It is the first day of the new year, a date that has been copied by the salkamaerian calendar. In elven homes, a single candle is lit and kept burning throughout the day, and in the night millions of small lanterns are lit all across elven settlements.
[edit] 2 Tanos
Tanos as second springtime month is the month for Tanora, also known as "Zelphia" by the Lizardmen. It consists of 24 days is said to to be the month of floods.
A harbour feast is held in many coast towns in Albar and Salkamar. The ice has almost completely melted by this time and ships can sail out again.
[edit] 3 Zhas
Zhas is the month for Zhambra. It consists of 24 days and is said to be the month of loyalty.
This month is a very busy time for peasants and fieldworkers around Albar and Salkamar. Some towns in Salkamar celebrate a poetry-festival, possibly inspired by an elven celebration. Zhas is also the period for important initiations or admition rituals in guilds and religious groups.
[edit] 3.1 Neirume (Day of the Cherry Blossom)
This pure elven commemoration day which is celebrated at the end of Zhas or in the beginning of Ushos, depending on the beginning of the cherry blossom, often on the 12th of Zhas. The "Day of the Cherry Blossom" reminds that nothing lasts for eternity and the secession of the House Narnil. Elven legends tell of the seperation and the fall of an elven house bearing the name of "Narnil", which descendants are now called "erume-lie." Due to the similarity of the names in the elven tongue and them being a symbol of transience, the leaves of cherry blossoms - "Neirume" - are spread in streams and rivers, accompanied by songs and chants. Well known is a translation of an ancient elven song from the libraries of Nanuk Moonsilver:
To the river I went alone,
Water to bail.
All around me delicately fell
The leaves of the cherry blossom.
With graceful ease they glide away,
In their dying beauty.
The water carried away the white splendor,
My heart to follow.
Freezing, the empty branches shiver
I am freezing in the wind.
[edit] 4 Ushos
Ushos as the last springtime month is the month for Ushara. It consists of 24 days and is said to be the month of sowing.
[edit] 4.1 Crocodile Feast
In Gynk they celebrate the "Crocodile Feast" from the 3rd to 17th Ushos. This is a huge, lasting street festival in which the people wear animal masks and consume large amounts of alcoholic drinks. Not too seldomly, this leads to the fact that the Gynkese town guards have to fish drunken or even drowned people out of the canals. There is even a rumor that the Crocodile Feast was named so because in fact it would be a feast for the crocodiles, but in truth the canals of Gynk are usually crocodile free.
