Bao

Bao did not enjoy the Winter Solstice.

The Winter Solstice Festival of Memory was beautiful and traditional and made up of all the things that kept the tribe together through the cold, hungry months, but it was a real pain to organise.

And that was Bao's job. He was in charge now, so the arrangements for the Festival were his to oversee too.

It had been a week of what could only be described as a mixture of yelling, stress and complaining to Aguma (who was pretty much the only person in the Beylin Fist tribe who would just sit there and listen to everything Bao wanted to say to everyone else but couldn't if he didn't want to start a civil war). Bao was fairly certain that no-one was actually listening to him, or at least were doing their own thing as soon as he turned his back, because there could be no other reason why he'd only managed to tick about three things off on his list of preparations to complete. It didn't matter how good you were at delegating, if the people you picked didn't do their delegated jobs, it was still a huge mess that was going to run up the chain of command and dump the whole lot in Bao's lap, to mix as many metaphors as he had jobs to do.

After separating a pair of squabbling twins who wanted different colour schemes on their family table, redirecting an over-enthusiastic collection of young teenagers armed with beys and mischievous grins to go and get the firewood, and having three circular arguments about exactly the same thing with three different members of the Council, all within the space of an hour, Bao had finally had enough. Silently abandoning the chaos, he went and sat on the bench outside his family's quarters and put his head in his hands. He just needed a minute to think without everyone clamouring for his attention, or doing everything so disastrously wrong that he had to step in personally to rescue it.

Suddenly, something warm and soft dropped over him. Bao took his hands away from his face to find himself in darkness.

"Aguma?" he guessed.

"It'll be fine," Aguma's voice rumbled from above his head. "The Solstice is always like this, you know that."

Bao put a hand out and met cloth. "Aguma, did you just throw a blanket over me?"

"Yes. And it worked. You're not completely absorbed in your own brain any more, are you?"

Bao pulled the rough wool blanket off of his head and looked up at his friend. "You are ridiculous. But thank you."

"No problem. I'm not the one who has to sort everyone out for tomorrow."

"I'm trying not to think about that. I swear none of them are listening to me, and half of them are deliberately getting things wrong. And why do they always come to me with the easy questions they could ask their team leaders?"

This time he got to see Aguma's smile. "First of all, they trust you. That's why they always come to you with the questions. You haven't led us astray yet, and you won't do it this time. Everything always works out in the end. As for whether they're listening, I've just passed a very large group of youngsters dragging in what looks like half a tree, most of the family tables are decorated and the ones that aren't are just waiting for the rest of the cloths to be brought up from the stores, the cooks have informed me that they have a steady stream of volunteers for peeling and chopping vegetables now that the decorations are mostly done in the Hall, the twins have agreed on gold and silver, First Team and Second Team are having a competition to see who can sweep the floors of the Ceremony Hall the fastest, Takafuma is going around collecting the names of those who want to sing their own individual blessings-chant… " His smile got a bit wider. "Does that tick a few things off your list?"

Honestly. Aguma could read him like a book. "Just a few." He shifted along on the bench as Aguma sat down next to him. "I'm sorry. I know it always works out in the end, it's just… if they all did what I asked when I asked, we could have had this done yesterday."

"Where's the fun in that?" Aguma laughed. "And they do listen to you. I say it every year; we're a proud people, we don't like doing things someone else's way. We 're not too good at taking orders, any of us."

Bao held his gaze a fraction longer than usual, knowing what the deeper meaning of those words was all too well. He still hadn't completely forgiven himself for letting Pluto and Johannes control the movements of the Beylin Fist five years previously, as if they were just tools or toys to be used up and discarded.

"And if that doesn't persuade you, all nine Elders insisted I tell you that you're doing your best job yet. Even though this is the biggest one we've ever done."

"Why can't I organise the Summer Solstice Ceremony of Forgetting?" Bao grumbled. "We don't have to decorate for that one."

"That's because we travel during Summer Solstice, you know that, Bao. Now come on. Let's go get food. If we're fast there might even be some dinner left..."

.

Of course Aguma was right. By the time that Bao called everyone together and ordered them all off to bed, pretty much everything on his list had been ticked off at last.

And so, nearly twenty-four hours after Aguma had thrown a blanket over his head to stop him from stressing out so much, Bao found himself in front of the entire Beylin Fist tribe, watching as a group of the younger members enthusiastically went about the traditional re-enactment the day that Beylin Fist had been thrown out of Beylin Temple. With stylised stances and moves that were almost more like dancing than acting, it was a complex sequence that was a ceremony in itself at this point, celebrating the time that the clan had pulled together and made their own way into the future after the main school had refused to understand their ideas. It really hadn't been all that long since Bao had been part of it himself, rather than an observer.

The pageantry was coming to an end. The youngsters playing Beylin Temple all spun around to face away from the main crowd and knelt, hiding their faces from the group playing Beylin Fist to symbolise the way the main school had ignored them as Beylin Fist strode out into the world. With a swirl, a stamp and a shout, the Beylin Fist players formed a solid line, shoulder to shoulder with no gaps between, and faced their leader.

"We are Beylin Fist!" they declared as one. "We are warriors! We will fight the darkness in our own way, and the world will see us as mighty!"

"BEYLIN FIST!" the rest of the hall responded, the traditional ending to the play. But this year there was something new.

It was very odd to watch someone play him, Bao decided, as the older teenagers stepped into the space to begin a ceremonial re-enactment of the Fall of Nemesis, as much as the Beylin Fist had been involved anyway. It was now an important part of their tribe's history of course, and so preserving it in their ceremonies was vital, but there was something very strange about watching his own story play out in ritualised dance-battles in the middle of the Ceremony Hall. Beside him, Aguma shifted slightly closer and Bao risked a glance upwards. It was difficult to read Aguma's expression, but Bao had known him long enough to know when Aguma was feeling the same way he was.

Bao stood up, and the tribe stood as one with him, fanning out to form a loose circle.

"We gather in the darkness," Bao began, speaking the words that so many leaders before him had used. "The winter has reached its depths. Outside, the sun has fallen into shadows. As the fires dim, we remember the year that fades."

"We remember and give thanks," the tribe answered.

All around the hall, the heads of the families began extinguishing all the fires and lanterns and torches until only one remained, in Aguma's hand. Bao took it carefully and held it up, a single light against the dark, a tiny flickering flame. Then, in the breathless silence, he blew it out.

"In the darkness, we await the dawn," he said, letting his voice ring around the dark hall. "We look to the year that comes, and celebrate the returning of the sun."

"We remember and give thanks," came the ritual response.

Now for the trickiest part of all. Bao swept his beyblade out from under his cloak and launched it in a single explosive movement, sending Hades Crown whirling out into the centre of the hall until it reached the edge of one of the recently-extinguished fires. "Hades Crown, Flash Attack!"

The Flash Attack sparked against the wood and instantly ignited it, sending light springing into the roof once more and revealing the faces of his tribe. Fire had been restored. Light had come back from the darkness. Taking a deep breath, Bao began the first lines of the blessings-chant.

"For sky above and rock beneath,

For shelter, water, food to eat,

For beys that spin and spirits bright,

For days to hold against the night..."

The words seemed to fade into the walls themselves as the rest of the tribe joined in, the plainsong chant rippling through the hall. One by one, families and individuals stepped forwards with their own offerings of things they wished to give thanks for, from things as small as a lost ring being found to as large as a marriage between two families.

As the voices carried on, Bao thought back to the chants he had once written. Now that he was the one leading the ceremony, he couldn't sing of his own blessings, being the figurehead for the whole tribe instead of an individual for the length of the ceremony, but that didn't mean there weren't things to be thankful for. In fact, there was quite a list.

He had a home. His family were alive. He was alive too, something he had been explicitly thankful for ever since the Nemesis Crisis when he had realised just how fragile his life could be.

His tribe were safe. He was their leader, and despite everything they had actually listened to him in the end, not just on the preparations for the Solstice, but for everything. He had excellent guide in the Elders, and excellent support fro the rest of the adults, so that despite his youth they were willing to follow him wherever he led.

And of course he had Aguma. That was something he was thankful for every year. The more that he stepped into his role as one of the clan leaders, the more he valued his friend's solid, dependable presence at his side, like a reliable shield he could use to keep his sanity safe.

Even as the list of things he could be thankful for expanded in his head, he realised that the sound in the hall was fading away. Right. Time for the last part of the evening, and then all this would be over at last.

"We have sung our songs of thanks," he said, holding out both hands with his palms upwards. "We have acknowledged our history, we have brought our thanks for the year. The night has passed. The morning is near."

The hall was silent. Every eye was on him, every person perfectly still.

"Let us feast in celebration that the sun will return!"

The cheer that went up made his ears ring.

.

Bao did not particularly enjoy the Winter Solstice.

The endless stress of trying to get people to do what he asked, the strain of remembering all the words and phrases he had to use, as well as what he had to do at every moment in the ceremony… it wasn't exactly fun for him, no matter how much everyone else liked it.

But he would be the first to say that, once all the lists were ticked off and the work done and the pageantry finished, there was something beautiful about watching his tribe celebrating the return of the sun all together.

Knowing that he didn't have to do anything the next day helped too.