Chapter 11: The Winter Festival I

"What is it?"

The slightly frustrated voice of Padawan Anakin Skywalker rang through the apartment as he entered and his Master looked up from the pad he'd been reading.

"What is…what?" he wanted to know.

"Winter Festival," Anakin explained, "all the other padawans and initiates are talking about it and I don't have the faintest idea of what it is."

Obi-Wan creased his brow. "You don't? No, of course you don't. I'm sorry Anakin, I haven't even thought about explaining it to you."

"Well, but what is it?" Anakin's patience was wearing thinner by every minute.

"It's a festival," his Master explained and was rewarded with an annoyed glare from the ten year old in front of him.

"Duh, I could have figured out that myself," Anakin frowned and Obi-Wan bursted in laughter.

"I'm sorry - again. It was just too tempting," he grinned, "now sit down and I'll explain it to you."

Anakin nodded and sat down, knowing fully well that now they were talking business.

"You know that every planet, or at least most of them have some kind of cycles?" Obi-Wan asked rhetorically.

Anakin nodded.

"Most planets also have one cycle determined by the time it takes for the planet to circumference the sun or stare it's orbiting. Coruscant doesn't have such a thing per se, or rather we don't notice it due to the artificial climate control we have. But of course there used to be visual cycles here as well, before the planet was fully inhabited."

Anakin nodded again. Now they were getting somewhere.

"So, once a year the settings of the artificial climate control is altered so for three days it's giving us a winter climate with snow and less daylight to celebrate the end of a cycle and the start of a new one. Over the time the Coruscantii have adapted to this and they have created a celebration which is meant to be a replica of how the celebrations were done before the climate control was established. Very few people really know what it was like so I assume that if we had been able to compare the historical celebration with the one we have today it would have been quite a lot of differences."

"What is snow?" Anakin asked.

Obi-Wan raised an eyebrow and looked at his Padawan.

"It's frozen water, basically."

"Yuck," Anakin grimaced. "Sounds too cold to me."

Obi-Wan chuckled and his eyes got a dreamy expression: "Yes, you may find that part a bit cold, Padawan, but the physical chill is overcome by the warmth in each beings hearts."

"What do you mean, Master?"

"It's the time of the year when everyone strives to be the best they can be," Obi-Wan explained. "You will see that decorations are hung up and there are even more lights than normal. But most beings also focus on being kind to each other."

"Do the Jedi, I mean we, decorate too?"

"Yes, we do. The Temple will be decorated with lights and there will be festoons hung up all over the place. Sometimes they even decorate a tree out in the Grand Hall."

"A tree?" Anakin asked incredulously.

"A tree," Obi-Wan confirmed, "I believe they borrow it from The Garden of Many Fountains and plant it back when the festival is over."

"But…you said that people should be kind to each other. We should be kind all year round, right Master?"

"You're absolutely right, Padawan. But during the Winter Festival it becomes more visual."

"How so?"

Obi-Wan blushed slightly.

"It's…well…it's hard to explain, but people do extra nice things to each other during the festival."

"What do you mean by 'extra nice things', Master?"

Obi-Wan sighed softly.

"My first Winter Festival came a few months after I'd been apprenticed by Master Qui-Gon. It took a long time before he accepted me as his apprentice and in the beginning I felt very insecure about the whole thing. I knew in my heart that the Force wanted me to be his Padawan but I wasn't too sure about his feelings in that matter. So when the Winter Festival approached I didn't know what to expect. When I was an initiate the dorms were always decorated and we got some extra treats with the meals. And we gave small presents to our best friends.

As it was, I didn't have a clue of how the festival would be for an apprentice. My relationship with my Master had improved tremendously after his best …friend, Tahl, intervened."

"Who is Tahl?" Anakin asked.

A glimpse of sorrow flashed over Obi-Wan's face and disappeared almost as quickly as it had appeared.

"She was a friend of Qui-Gon's and later a friend of mine too," he explained. "She became the closest to a mother I ever had."

"Where is she now? I have never met her."

A new flash of sorrow appeared and was effectively drained into the Force.

"She…died many years ago."

Before Anakin could come up with the next inevitable question, Obi-Wan continued his tale: "Well, anyways, the night before Winter Festival started I went to bed as usual. There were no signs of any decorations coming up and everything seemed to be normal. I felt disappointed, but did my best to hide it. After all I was exactly where I wanted to be and if there would be no celebration of the Festival in our home I could live with that.

I fell to sleep and didn't think anymore until my Master woke me up in the middle of the night and told me to get dressed. I was rather groggy from the sleep so I obeyed the requirement without any comments. It was highly unusual but I didn't have time to ponder about it. And, if so, well so be it. My Master wasn't a very ordinary man either. So I dressed quickly and followed him out into the turbolift. I was a bit surprised when he pushed the 'up' button instead of the 'down' which would have made more sense to me.

We stopped several levels up and exited the lift. Master Qui-Gon lead me through the dark corridors in the upper part of the Temple until we came to a place which obviously was in one of the towers with an overview over the main entrance. There he stopped.

'What are we doing here, Master?' I asked. I was still a bit sleepy but the tower was chilly and I felt something like excitement crawling up my spine. This was indeed not our regular habit.

'We wait,' he answered cryptically.

'For what?' I tried.

'Patience, my Padawan,' he chuckled and laid a large hand on my shoulder, 'patience.'

And then I saw it. Tiny white flakes began falling from the sky. First a few, then some more, and more and more until the night sky was a white-grey haze. It was the first snow of the Winter Festival. And then Coruscant burst into colors. I knew that there were even more lights and colours during the Winter Festival than through the rest of the year, but I had never had such an overview over it before. It was spectacular, indeed.

And the snow kept falling.

We stood there a long time without speaking, mesmerised by the sight of the white layers that slowly covered the roofs of the Temple below us. Finally Qui-Gon moved.

'I always love coming up here at this time of the year,' he said softly. 'There is no better view over the city than from here.'

I just nodded. I was dumbfounded.

'Thank you, Master, for letting me see this,' I said.

The only answer I got was a tight squeeze of my shoulder.

'Come, Padawan, we have something else to do.'

Now I was wide awake and I soon realised where we were heading. Master had a steady course towards the upper garden. The one that is basically on top of the Temple. I just didn't know why. I soon learned it.

We tread out into the garden and it was a beautiful sight. The heavy snow was covering the ground and the trees that surround the garden area. It was almost silent up there, at least as silent as Coruscant can possibly be. It was a new, white, peaceful world.

The peace didn't last long. I was in the middle of the open space just outside the door when something wet and cold hit the back of my head. Instinctively I grabbed it and felt it melt away. And I heard my Master's rumbling laughter behind me.

'One of the true joys in this world is a snowball fight during the Winter Festival,' he said, and with that a new snowball came flying through the air. This time I was partly prepared so I managed to dive before it hit me. And then I understood. I grabbed a handful snow and made a loose snowball and threw it towards Qui-Gon. It developed into a full scale snow war in the garden. Master was more precise than me in his throws, but I was young and quick and more able to hide behind trees and bushes. The fight ended about twenty minutes later when he finally captured me and pinched me to the ground. By then we were both laughing so hard that it was a wonder we didn't wake the entire Temple.

'I yield,' I gasped and Master let me go.

We were both a sight. The snow stuck to our clothes and Master resembled a wampa pup. I assume I was no better myself. We were drained partly by sweat after the exercise and partly by snow that had melted on our clothes and soaked us.

'We'd better go home and find some dry clothes,' Master Qui-Gon concluded, and even though I felt like I could have stayed there forever laughing and having fun I realised he had a valid point. Going down with a flu during the Winter Festival was not desirable.

So we returned.

I didn't notice at first that someone was in our apartment, but as soon as I came in the door I just froze - pretty much like the snow man I had resembled some minutes earlier. Candles were lit in the entire apartment, festoons hung over the window and above the doors and in the living room section a tall plant had been decorated by a cascade of tiny lights.

I just gaped.

'Welcome back, boys,' Tahl greeted us. 'Now, off you go and clean up a bit and put on dry clothes. The choc is almost heated.'

We both knew that when Master Tahl spoke it was wise to abide so we disappeared into our respective bedrooms to change into dry clothes. I came out in my sleeping pants and a clean tunic while Master Qui-Gon had found a pair of comfortable leggings and a crisp new tunic.

Master Tahl was waiting with three large mugs of steaming hot choc. I don't know what she had done to it but it was a special spicy aftertaste that was different from every other hot choc I had ever tasted before, and it tasted wonderfully together with the spicy biscuits that she'd placed on a plate in the living room.

'Happy Winter Festival,' she said.

And it was. I then realised that my fears about not celebrating the Festival properly had been totally crushed and it seemed to be the best Winter Festival I'd ever had."