I need archaic, evocative words for "winter" and "spring"

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Balance

Given the cosmology you’ve described, why would your world have seasons at all? Or even months as we know them?

Because the Phoenix’s power is great, but not infinite. It begins the year in the full flower of its might, but as it expends its flame to heat & light the world below, it gradually grows weaker, till by mid-winter, its flame is all but extinguished. I’d explain how said flame is lit again, but that’s a plot point.

And there are no months.

Does your flatland tilt back and forth? Does the Phoenix alter its behavior over time? If so, how and why? Is there a reason for your “moon” to wax and wane over the course of a month?

No, yes, answered above, and it doesn’t–that is, the “moon” in the Fabulous Plane has no phases. It’s not used to mark time.

Also, there’s a tangentially related question–does the Phoenix fly east-to-west one day, then back west-to-east the next, or does it circle around out of sight?

It’s east-to-west each time. No character in the story has any idea what the Phoenix does when it dips out of sight each evening. As the FP’s creator, I’ve gone back and forth between two thoughts:

1. There’s another world on the “underside” of the Fabulous Plane which the Phoenix also acts as the sun for, and
2. When it crosses the western horizon, the Phoenix passes through a sort of space-time warp. That is, the space in this world is “closed,” so that it passing through the horizon on the west takes you back to the west; but from the point of view of a person undergoing such a journey, the transition is instananeous, whereas from the point of a Fabulous creature there is a twelve-hour (or so) gap between the two (otherwise night as night).

I’m not picking on your world design–it’s a neat idea–these are just the kind of questions I ask when I’m designing a world with non-standard cosmology.
Answering them might gives you some direction on a calendar. Tenar’s suggestions look like a good starting point. To expand on them, you might call summer “The Slow” and winter “The Swift”. That would lead to an oddly contradictory name for fall–“The Quickening”, a possible source of entertaining confusion for your protagonists. Spring might be “The Slowing”.

Considerations like these can offer little touches of verisimilitude, too. If the Phoenix lands on a mountain at noon, then it’s obviously much closer to the world’s surface than the sun is to ours. That means that its light will not be arriving in effectively parallel rays, like our sun’s. In our world, shadows almost disappear at noon, but that wouldn’t necessarily be the case in your world. At noon, objects east of the mountain would have shadows stretching out to the east, for example. Since your main characters are from our world, that could mess with their sense of time.

I’d already thought of the Swift & the Slow names, but, as I mention in another post in this thread, I see the days as getting LONGER in the winter, not shorter, as the Phoenix grows wearier. I hadn’t thought of the shadow idea yet; that’s a good one. I do want to explore ways the Fabulous Plane fucks with the minds of human visitors.

Just some thoughts from a finicky world-builder.

Good thoughts!

[Malacandra]

@Fabulous Creature

You mean “plagiarism.”

Actually I don’t quite agree, though I don’t intend to use the good professor anyway. If I were simply to use a word J. R. R. used in his legendarium but didn’t coin–say “dwarrows” or “gnomes”–that is certainly not plagiarism. But if I used a word he coined and which the Tolkien estate has trademarked–say “hobbit”–then that’s another thing, and nothing I want to get into. I started looking for another word because I was thinking of calling the season “Winterfilth” but didn’t care for the sound, and also it sounded too Shirey.

Tolkien didn’t invent the word “Winterfilth”, fwiw. Also it doesn’t have anything to do with muddy weather but with the “filling” of the first full moon of the season. Just today’s piece of trivia.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Malacandra

Tolkien didn’t invent the word “Winterfilth”, fwiw. Also it doesn’t have anything to do with muddy weather but with the “filling” of the first full moon of the season. Just today’s piece of trivia.

Oh, I know that–both data, actually. I’m using “Winterfilth” as a place-holder till I think of something without the connotation (to modern ears) of mud & dirt; also because, since there are no moon-phases in this world, the “filling” part doesn’t work.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

You know, you could also use the names of Months & Days from the Revolutionary Calendar to provide names for counties/shires/villages/town in your world.

Seems to fit the theme.

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Bosda Di'Chi of Tricor

You know, you could also use the names of Months & Days from the Revolutionary Calendar to provide names for counties/shires/villages/town in your world.

Seems to fit the theme.

You mean the French Revolutionary calendar, no?

[Skald_the_Rhymer]

@Tenar

Why not terms that make reference to the Phoenix, like “Long Flight” for summer and “Short Flight” for winter, or “Fast Flight” and “Slow Flight”?

You know, now that I’ve not merely read your post but actually paid attention to it, it’s not that bad an idea.

[Bosda_Di_Chi_of_Tricor]

@Fabulous Creature

You mean the French Revolutionary calendar, no?

Well, yes.

Or is that “oui”?

If I were playing games, “Wii”.