Michael is right. I believe in the olden days we used to call the sort of thing a "God learners explanation". Its just an aid to help our 21C brains understanding, doesnt have to be anything that the Heortlings use.
G
Michael Schwartz <mschwartz_at_E0D8iagiE3pbdP_xlUQ1OzTa7TvWDrXY84saWxn2kIkOUsj7-7DVMTjI0l1O4dVg8lxeX0PF1slJ5FWluwMcuQ.yahoo.invalid> wrote: Ian Cooper wrote:
>Their age does not seem to grant them
>any kind of in-between status.
In the real world, however, distinctions *do* occur. The suggested Newborn, Younger and Older categories are useful ones, and could be explained as being "unspoken rules" within Heortling culture. Every real-world agrarian society of which I am aware distinguishes between children who are mature enough to contribute to the day-to-day labor and those who are not, even if no one in the society would think to lump those children together into a group by name. Our need is to provide prospective narrators with numbers that work for Twenty-first Century mindsets, yet do not derail the mythopoetic focus of the setting.
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