Fiona.
Thes, an ancient alien word for freedom, was the first planet that humans had colonised in the era of space exploration and colonisation that had come early to some thirty thousand brave members of the human race. The humans were mostly from Japan, Korea, Australia and New Zealand; a group that had mainly been recruited under the auspices of a marketing group that had dealings in all four countries. Escaping wars and other man-made disasters, the CEOs of several international corporations and forward thinking scientists had looked to populating the stars almost three hundred Earth years ago. Thes was the first and most successfully colonised by a group of adventurous scientists and their families.
The planet had not been found on their star maps. In fact not even the star was known to the astronomers of old Earth. The group of travellers had found many things in contradiction. What is and what was fact as dictated by the inferior technology of Earth was definitely in conflict.
A travelling band of interstellar scientists and ambassadors had encountered them after several years in travel. The alien group had mentally scanned the humans and had materialised in the middle of blank space and hailed them. "Brothers of the Warrior," they had called them and had promised them assistance in their journey. Upgrading the crude engines they found on the ships and providing other wondrous tools and instruments that had only been dreamt of in science fiction they had guided the fledging space faring race to a suitable planet.
The hastily recruited human ambassadors and the representatives of a variety of alien species had spent many days and nights discussing their situations. The aliens provided knowledge and data freely and without condition. The humans in turn tried to express how much this generosity meant to them.
A blue robed priestess, a follower of the Chrysalis Order she told them, accepted their attempts at thanking their new friends. "You have come far, my brothers and sisters, it is time for you to feel thes and lay down your troubles. A time to rebuild and redefine yourselves in the cosmos."
When asked what thes had meant the woman had smiled. "It is a slip of the tongue, my apologies. It is from an ancient phrase from my home. Thes na Klein. Freedom and Love. It is what we wish to all who gather in peace."
So the ambassadors had named their new home in honour of this ancient blessing. Its formal name was Thes na Klein but it had been shortened to simply Thes. Freedom.
Once they had established themselves in the new solar system they had begun to receive visitors from other worlds. Soon the new human colonists found themselves working with a variety of different species and governments. It was a time of great contentment.
There was only one worry in the back of the early colonists' minds. Those that were supposed to come after them, the second and third waves, never came. It was almost a hundred cycles after they had fled angry government officials and rabid protestors that wanted to take their hard earned places on the first ships before any news arrived. Several dozen ships of a similar design to their first ships had been found destroyed with no survivors. The ships it seemed had been sabotaged and had exploded from detonations inside the vessels and not from any attack from another species. It was news that was met with great sorrow. Seemingly they had been fortunate to leave when they did. No longer did the scientists look to the skies in hope that those they had left behind would soon arrive.
Since coming to Thes the scientists had dropped all Earth time references. Thes rotated on a twenty-eight hour day and took 400 days to revolve around its yellow star. The planet had a small inclination, slightly less than three degrees. Therefore there was no appreciable difference in northern and southern hemisphere seasons. They decided to break the year up into three seasons, coinciding with the changes that occurred to the planet on its slight elliptical orbit. Harvest, Planting and Fallow. Hence they began to refer to years as cycles. A cycle being the time it took to not only revolve around the star but also the time to turn through the seasons. Each of the seasons had a temperature variation of about ten degrees Celsius while the Harvest season experienced a little more rain in the south and the north getting most of its rain in the Planting season.
The months were no longer named after old gods or artificial counting methods that confused many logical scientists because of the root meaning being lost in the rearrangement of the calendar thousands of years ago. The months were sequentially numbered Firstmonth, Secondmonth, Thirdmonth, etc.