Areshnaat keeps four moons. Three of them — Red, Green and Blue — ride close and fast, bound to one another in a lock that none of them can leave. White, the Pale moon, rides far out alone, and it is White that the months are counted by.
| Moon | Distance | Period | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Red | 61,500 km | 1.75 days | innermost, swiftest, burning |
| Green | 97,700 km | 3.5 days | the middle seat |
| Blue | 155,100 km | 7 days | outermost of the three, and the steadiest |
| White | 372,000 km | 28 days, full to full | the calendar moon |
The lock
Red, Green and Blue keep a strict ratio: Red circles four times for Green's two and Blue's one. The arrangement is not a coincidence and is not fragile — it is the reason the three can run as close together as they do without throwing one another out of the sky. Each pass tugs the others back into step.
It is also why they look the way they do.
Red pays for the lock. Held at the innermost seat and pulled at constantly by the two above it, it is kneaded hard enough to stay molten, and it burns — the swiftest of the four and the only one that is visibly on fire.
Blue is furthest from that punishment and keeps its ice. Its orbit is the roundest and the least troubled of the three, which is why navigators and astrologers who want a fixed thing to measure against measure against Blue.
Green sits between, worked over enough to have resurfaced but not enough to burn, and shows the raw stone beneath.
White, and the months
White is near enough a twin of the moon of Earth, a little closer in — some twelve thousand kilometres, which is nothing to the eye. That small difference is what makes the calendar work: White runs full to full in twenty-eight days, so thirteen of its months make 364, and the year is thirteen months and a single day over.
That leftover day belongs to no month.
White is also where Aavaraya is held, in The Binding of Aavaraya — and the Pale moon is of the physical cosmos, not of Aamantlan. He was put somewhere real and far, which is the whole point of the binding.
Consequences
The tides are strong, and they are exact. Four moons pulling at once make the water move hard — but because Red, Green and Blue are locked, their pull does not wander. In seven days Red works three times, Green five and Blue six, and then the whole pattern begins again precisely. Seven days is the tide-week, four tide-weeks make White's month, and fifty-two make the year.
So the seas are violent and perfectly knowable at the same time, which is a rarer thing than either. The seven days are counted as The Tide-Week. The seas off Ereslim are dangerously swift — fast water, not unreadable water, and the difference is the whole of a pilot's trade.
The sun is swallowed more often. White's disc runs a little larger than Earth's moon against the same sun, so when it crosses, it covers — total eclipses are the common kind here, and the ring of fire is the rarity.