Time is kept by the moon — terms, feasts, and the famous lantern festival.
The school counts years in cycles of the moon count, kept by the order of the frostmoth on the starspire. The current cycle is 1444. Each cycle has twelve moon-months; each moon-month, four weeks of seven nights. Days are for sleeping; dates are given as month and night (e.g., “the 9th night of Frostfall”).
The twelve months: Snowmelt, Budbreak, Birdsong, Highsun, Haymoon, Harvest, Leaffall, Frostfall, Longnight, Wolfmoon, Thaw, and Starfall.
Between terms: the dark weeks — short breaks when students go home, or don’t, and the school goes quiet except for the wisps.
The year's end and its crown. Every student, teacher, and creature of the grounds releases a paper lantern over Moonmirror Lake at moonrise; the sky-show woven by the graduating spellweavers follows. The moon cup is awarded, graduates are unbound, and the archive choir sings the founders' names. Visitors are welcome — the gate stands open all night, and the night market runs until dawn.
The year's beginning: the headmistress reads the founders' promise aloud at the moon gate, new ribbons are tied in the founders' grove, and the kitchens serve snowmelt soup (it's just leek soup; the name is traditional).
One night per term with no spoken magic from dusk to dawn — only runes, gesture, and song. The nightingales call it the most beautiful night of the term. First-years call it the hardest.
Celebrated with great solemnity and a mushroom cake. The date is set each year by Professor Oakenshade "according to badger signs" and has never repeated. The groundskeeper keeps a list; it is the school's least predictable tradition.
The gnome and dwarf exchange scholars are honored; gnome cheese and dwarf honey-cakes appear in the refectory; the exchange table teaches everyone the gnome card game thunderbridge, which no elf has ever won.
At the lantern festival, each graduate’s ribbon is untied from the founders’ grove and retied to their wrist, to be worn until it falls off naturally. The headmistress speaks the same words every year: “the light is given; the shaping is yours now. Go gently, come back often, and feed the wisps.”