Zero Isn't a Figure of Speech
Kiri's people only breed in the years the rimu fruits, and the rimu fruits every two years, every three, sometimes every four. In the years between, absolutely nobody is born: the birth count is zero, literal zero, not rounded down to it. The biology underneath is well documented. In the breeding season, the male kakapo digs a bowl in the ground, inflates a thoracic sac, and produces a boom of between twenty and a hundred hertz for up to eight hours a night, audible for kilometres. In the years without fruit, nobody booms.







