Hello. My name is Helen, and I am a magician. I am on the short side, my hair wavy and in the color of wheat fields. People say this is hair color lucky, because it helps with the harvest. I don’t know, my family is not one of farmers. My father is a merchant. And so will be my elder brother. He is two years older than me.

I was never good at anything. My magic is average, but all the rest of my stats is crap. I can’t carry a full adventurer gear nor lift a sword, I can’t shoot with a bow or throw a knife even if my life depended on it. I also have zero stamina. Just walking from the town to the “beginner’s forest” carrying a light two-days-one-night camping gear wore me out.

But I can use magic, so it is a redeeming factor. Mages are rare and useful. Even one that can only use apprentice-grade spells like me. To be honest, I can use one journeyman spell, fireball. But I am scared to use it, so I never told anyone I can do it.

I completed my training and celebrated my fifteenth birthday on debutant day. In our country, everyone around the same age celebrates their birthday together.

I grew up in this town, with three close friends. We have been together for what seems to be forever. Cloude, Julius and Marcy. The townsfolk are always teasing us asking who will marry whom, but there is no way we would marry between us. We are like brothers and sisters. Pups of the same litter. I think everyone that celebrate the same birthday together feels the same.

After we completed our basic training under the tutelage of some retired adventurers that were friends with our families we were already fifteen years old. Adults! I don’t feel any different, to be honest. Wish we were capable to evolve like monsters, so these doubts would never float. It would be [Child evolves to… an adult!] and that is it. Goblins have it easy if you think that way.

Children under 11 celebrate on midwinter. They are showered with food and gifts from the townsfolk, and the celebration takes on a whole week! Some kids from good families even gain money. Babies are specially cherished. Some old wives spend most of the fall season and early spring knitting clothes to give to the babies on midwinter. The elders also fast during this festival. Sometimes some old grandma or grandpa passes away during the feast. But it is still a joyful feast, to celebrate both the beginning and end of life. I wonder how this tradition came to be.

Teenagers between 12 and 14 years celebrate during midsummer. This is the time most artisans and other people seek out apprentices, and during the midsummer night these youngsters seek out masters, to learn a craft. I also found my master during my twelth midsummer, just like my friends. The earlier you can find a master the better. During this time the teenager leaves home, and lives with the master. There is no tuition fee, and no compensation to the family. The master provides shelter, food and clothing during this time, but the apprentice is supposed to work hard unter the master, to learn their craft. But mistreatment of apprentices is heavily frowned upon, so the masters are not too harsh. Almost everyone becomes an apprentice at most on the thirteenth birthday. There is little time to learn a craft between your fourteenth and fifteenth birthdays. More on it later.

Debutant day is celebrated in spring three weeks after the defrosting. The young fourteen years old debutants-to-be help clearing the ice and snow from the town during these weeks. It is said that helping the rebirth of the town after winter also causes the rebirth of the children. Those that learned a craft also help out with repairs, a kind of gauntlet to prove they are able artisans. The warriors set out on joint expeditions with their masters to clear out the monsters around town, because spring is a season where several monsters are spawned. And the ones that spawn right after winter are the most powerful ones.

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Adults celebrate their birthdays in the harvest festival. It is also a time when lots people get maried, and lots of babies are born. I don’t know the reason. The elders said that as the plants give their harvest, so do the people during this season. Sounds ok to me. I know it is a busy season for women, both the ones birthing the babies and the ones caring for the mothers. But to be fair, it is also a busy season for the men too, with all the harvest stuff going on.

The poll tax is also collected during fall, one week before the harvest festival. Everyone over sixteen years old has to pay the tax, or become a tax slave for one year. The reason adults of fifteen years old don’t have to pay is to give them a chance to build their livelihood before paying tax. Sounds fair to me. Tax slaves are released before winter one year after they became slaves. So they spend one birthday as slaves, the “fall after they fell”. Some people find this phrase funny. I don’t. They earn wages as tax slaves, but can’t choose what job to do. The kingdom’s knights decide what they will do. They also don’t have to pay poll tax during their slave harvest festival. “Work harder so you don’t fall again next fall!!” is also a common tax slave motivational phrase.

You can’t celebrate the birthday if you don’t have “at least one winter under your belt”. So babies born in the harvest festival do not get one year old on the winter right next to the fall. They have to grow and survive through all the seasons until the winter. The old ladies do not gift clothes to those newborn babies. It is the mother’s responsibility to care for the baby.

Some people say this is the reason siblings are almost aways two years apart. But they are dismissed as crazy talk.

For the same reason, there is the dreaded eleventh winter. Children of eleven years old don’t celebrate their twelfth birthday in the summer right after the winter they turned eleven. They must spend one winter as eleven-years-old children, to earn the right to become a teenager. They also don’t get showered with food and clothes, and have to do with what they have. Everyone gets very angsty during this eleventh winter. But throwing a tantrum or being a bad kid hurts your chances of getting a master on the midsummer festival, so everyone is advised to be a good kid.

At least the teenagers grow from fourteen years old to fifteen really fast. Summer, you are fourteen. Then comes fall, winter, and three weeks later you come of age.

And right then you are stuck fifteen for a long time. You became fifteen on summer, and there is no winter between summer and fall, so it is obvious you cannot become sixteen. You need to wait winter, spring, sumer and then become sixteen on the fall festival. Most people marry at this age too. Lots of mothers had their first babies around the age of seventeen. It is how life goes.

There are few people that think we should just count the winters and be over with this whole skipping birthdays crazyness, but everyone thinks they are the crazy ones, and the majority is always right!