Now-ish

Time appears to be a mortal invention.

Although the Shadow is the hidden twin of Prime in both time and space, it's more of an approximation than a copy. Details blur or shift, memories and monsters reshape things to their liking, or places remain vague, like charcoal sketch over a photograph. In much the same way, time flows in ways that approximate what's really going on without worrying too much about the details. Although no one has ever been able to move into the future by anyway other then just waiting for it, the past doesn't arrive for everyone at the same time. Time, if not an illusion, is at least inconsistent. Here and there, the hours pool in the sludge of three-hours-past or minute that tick by in a waterfall. The oceans, unconquered and unknown in the Shadow, shift days with currents and tides. There are places where timezones don't quite work the way they should. At the fuzzy edges of the Periphery, time loses even more of its cohesion. It is a well-studied but poorly understood phenomena of the Shadow, with humans always looking for a way to fix the things they regret. In an attempt to wrangle things into some semblance of order, denizens of the Shadow have coined the term Now-ish. It is the approximation of the present, no matter where you happen to be - give or take a few hours. Time-witches and the like learn to track Now-ish as a matter of course, but others have to rely on other means to tell and translate time, such as the Clock-Moth. Despite all that, time remains an unruly beast and rebels against all attempts to tame it. Some have successfully traversed Now-ish to arrive just before some horrible event in Prime and stopped it, but it's never a method you should bet on. Fictional wizards might arrive precisely when they meant to, but Walkers never do - most learn to keep a flexible schedule. They'll arrive, well, Now-ish.