"You've been gone for three days. What happened?"

"A storage unit of logs. These logs needed to be transported by no mechanical means into an empty storage unit beside the log-filled one. So a trial of endurance and manpower? Perhaps. One must be mindful of a potential for disruption. Is there a trap? Are there enemies in the background?"

"Were there?"

"No. Not an enemy in sight."

"So what was the problem?"

"For each log removed, another would generate in its place to fill the empty space created. The logs must all fit in the container beside the original. If you keep removing the logs from the holding container and more are generated, you will have too many to fit in the new container. It took a good few hours for me to notice new logs were being generated in the first place."

"Forgive me, but that doesn't sound very much like a trial for a Jedi."

"Well exactly. I was expecting some intrigue concerning the fate of a people, perhaps a tense negotiation or test of skills that required a lightsabre. Au contraire. I didn't use a lightsabre once. I didn't speak to anyone but myself for 72 hours. I didn't see another creature for the whole time. Just an endless bleak landscape, no vegetation, no population and no answers to the question at hand."

"How to move the logs."

"Precisely so."

Obi-Wan sat up. He and Cretia had been laying back on the roof of the senators' personal quarters building. As two padawans, they had often come here, to one of the tallest buildings on Coruscant to look at what stars the light pollution would let them view. Cretia had always struggled with naming the planets and systems in the galaxy and it had happened to be a speciality of Obi-Wan. A long time ago, she had asked for his help and they had decided to come here, away from the holograms of the Temple's teaching rooms, to play the game which would forever be remembered in a playfully childish way as 'Interplanetary In To Planets Are We'.

There was a difference now. Cretia had passed the Jedi Trials. There was only one padawan sitting on the roof staring at stars, and it was Obi-Wan. Cretia was due to embark on a mission into the Outer Rim systems when dawn broke and Qui-Gon was taking Obi-Wan on a mission to negotiate the hostile situation on Naboo the day after. This would most likely be the last chance to play Interplanetary In To Planets Are We for a while and Obi-Wan was interested to know if Cretia could actually point out the system she was due to visit in the skies above them. She couldn't and it had been hilarious, but he was more interested in listening to what had happened at the trials anyway.

Cretia continued "The point was, and is, that you need to be able to lock in to the living force. To understand the life around you, and that things have their places in the world, in their own micro universe. To shift things unnaturally, to move what belongs in one place to another without a good reason is to shift a natural balance out of kilter."

"So you didn't move them."

"I didn't move them."

"But your task was to move them."

"And when did the council state that in their briefing of the assignment? They didn't. There was a message on the front of the containers explaining the task, for sure, but who had given that message? Not the council."

"So the real trial was to come to the conclusion that the best course of action was to do nothing."

"I wouldn't say that it was to do nothing. I didn't sit there for three days and just do nothing. The trial was to reach out to realise what the correct act should be. The difference between what you are told to do, and to meditate on what is right to do. The logs had the echo of their life force within them. Their place was in that container and their purpose was yet unknown, to move them would be to shift their eventual purpose. One cannot manipulate events without knowing the history of why the current situation is as it is. I knew nothing of why they were in that particular container until the very end."

"What happened?"

"The container doors automatically sealed shut upon the 70th hour, which was the limit stated on the message within which these logs ought to have been shifted. In the 72nd hour came a speeder with a family of starved nemoidians. They couldn't see I was there and I couldn't communicate to them. They tried the empty second container first, but couldn't open it. They then tried the original container, and it opened upon their touch. They were beyond relief - they had logs with which to barter to purchase food."

Obi-Wan was silent for a moment, "So had you found a way to shift the logs, regardless of the regeneration of the originals, which I suppose could have been done by manipulating the force, the nemoidian family would have not been able to open the container which actually had the logs inside."

Cretia nodded. "And it was a solemn lesson."

Obi-Wan shifted uncomfortably. "I'm not sure I would have succeeded in the same way. I think in that trial, I would have shifted the logs, because that is what I had been instructed to do."

Cretia laughed, "And that, my friend, is why I'm now a Jedi Knight and you are still wearing the braid of a padawan."

"Is not!"

"I know, I know. I'm sorry. I didn't mean that. I'm teasing you. But seriously, me. Knowing what to do! I can't even tell you where the system is that I'm heading tomorrow!"

Silence was perhaps the only answer. Obi-Wan and Cretia sat without saying a word, letting the sounds of the night time traffic fill the space between them. Cretia had no master to go home to and Qui-Gon would, most likely, be deep in meditation as he often was in the days prior to a mission. Cretia hugged her knees, her new Jedi knight clothing fresh and shiny in the reflected light from the cruisers and speeders whipping past. Obi-Wan wondered if something would change now she had progressed to being a full Jedi. There would be no more training sessions in the temple, that was certain. There would be less padawan camaraderie perhaps. There was a difference in status in public.

Cretia rocked back and forth gently, still hugging her knees. Her boots hurt. Wearing in new boots always took time and she didn't have time. She wondered if taking the trials had been a mistake. Cretia didn't feel ready. And what would become of the fellow padawan bond between her and Obi-Wan now she had been elevated beyond the status of an apprentice?

They turned to speak to each other and laughed.

"You go first." Cretia requested.

"Are you nervous?"

"A little, and that's ok."

"Well" Obi-Wan grinned, "I'd be nervous if I couldn't locate the star system I was heading for in less than twenty four hours, too."

"You're such a pain."