Weirdly, this was the first one I started writing, way back on November 30th. It's also the one I've been looking forward to writing the most ever since then!
Tithi
Yuu had told Tithi everything about Christmas.
Well, that's what Tithi assumed anyway. He'd never had a Christmas before, and he was so excited that he was going to get to be part of it this year. Presents and food sounded like a brilliant idea. Yuu had invited him to stay with him and Tsubasa that year, and Tithi had been so enthusiastic that he'd actually turned up a week early, and had proceeded to do his best to find out everything he could about this strange holiday.
"Why have we got a tree?" he asked one day, as he and Yuu were working to decorate said tree whilst Tsubasa made lunch.
"We hang decorations on it so that it looks good in the window," Yuu explained from his precarious perch on a chair. "You saw all the lights on the trees when we went shopping for presents, right? It's like that, but just in our house."
"But no-one else on the street has one?" Tithi pointed out, untangling a knot of tinsel. "Do they not celebrate Christmas?"
"Not quite," Tsubasa called from the kitchen. "It's one of the traditions I brought over here, it's more of a Western thing. I'm from Canada originally, so I've got a lot of the Western traditions that I like to keep here too. There's some debate about who did it first, but it's generally thought that it was a pagan custom that got taken over for Christmas. Of course, now you don't need to be religious to have one. I just like having it. It reminds me of my childhood in my old home."
"Do you want to go back there?" Tithi asked. Tsubasa was silent for a moment, the only sound the soft tunk as a knife cut through something.
"No," he said at last. "My home's here now. Everyone I really care about is here. Besides, it's not like I can just abandon the WBBA like that."
Tithi nodded seriously, and handed the string of tinsel up to Yuu. "My home's here now too. But I don't have any traditions to bring here."
"That's fine, Tithi," Yuu said. "We can just make new ones! All we have to do is do the same thing again next year and there you go. We're making one now – decorating the tree together!"
That immediately cheered Tithi up. "That's awesome, Yuu! Let's make this the best tree ever!"
Tsubasa poked his head round the door a few minutes later to find his front room liberally covered with what looked like every single decoration from the box he had pulled from his attic that morning. His eagle, on the perch in the corner and happily munching on some chicken, was the only thing not buried under lights or tinsel or baubles. "Whoa," he said. "You do know you don't have to put everything on there, right? The wreath goes on the door, not on top of the tree. And that garland goes in the window." As two pairs of wide eyes turned to look at him, he laughed. "But you can do whatever with them, it's your tree as much as mine now."
"I'm going to put this on the door," Yuu announced, grabbing the wreath they had hung around the top branch. "How does it hang up, Tsubasa?"
"I'll show you," Tsubasa offered, and followed the younger blader out of the room.
They were gone for about five minutes, during which time Tithi managed to get almost all of the baubles onto the tree. The last one didn't seem to want to stay on its branch. There were two holes on one side of it, but they didn't go all the way through, and it didn't have a string or anything. It also didn't look like the other baubles – they were glittery and shiny and mostly rounded, whereas this one was rectangular and dull black, except for one white side edge.
"Hey, Tsubasa?" he asked as the other two came back in to the room. "How does this one go on the tree?"
"Oh!" Tsubasa exclaimed, eyes lighting up. "Where on earth did you find that, Tithi?"
"It was in the box..." Tithi began, but Tsubasa had already taken it from him and was holding it up to look at the white edge.
"I don't believe it," he said wonderingly. "I thought I'd lost this years ago, or at the very least that it was still in Canada."
"What is it?" Yuu asked, coming around to have a look. "I've never seen a bauble like that before."
"It's not a bauble," Tsubasa said. "It's a video cassette."
Tithi and Yuu looked at each other. "It's a what?"
Tsubasa smiled. "It's old technology. It's what we used to use before DVDs were invented. And this one is special. This one is a home-recorded one – look at the label. We recorded a program from the television onto it so that I could watch it again later. I even remember which year it was – it was the year I found my Eagle." The bird looked up at his name, but when more food obviously wasn't forthcoming, he went back to his preening. "It's a recording of The Snowman."
"So if it's like a DVD, can we watch it?" Yuu asked curiously. Tsubasa shrugged.
"I hope so," he said. "But it needs a proper player, and I don't know if I have one here, or if it will even work if I do. Tell you what, you two go and get lunch – you've earned it for all your hard work on the tree! - and I'll go back into the attic and see if I can find something to play this with."
And with that, he disappeared out into the hallway.
"Guess we should get food, then?" Yuu suggested. "You've done an awesome job on the tree, Tithi, it looks great!"
"Thanks! I like doing this, we should definitely do it again next year."
"Ugh, next year," Yuu said, wrinkling his nose. "It's so far away, I want it to be next year already! I want the next World Championship to hurry up and get here!"
"Me too! And I'm definitely going to be on your team. You and me and Tsubasa and… who else should we have?"
Yuu led the way into the kitchen. "So you're an all-rounder, I'm a Stamina type and Tsubasa's a Defence type, so we should have an Attack type to make sure that we can take on anything!"
The two boys happily chatted their way through lunch, debating the pros and cons of different bladers in their fantasy World Championship team. Most of the bread was gone, and all of the cheese and pickle, when Tsubasa reappeared with a massive grin on his face and a big silver box in his arms.
"You're in luck," he said. "This was right at the back, and there was a bunch of wires with it too. With some work, I reckon I can get this working again in about half an hour."
"Awesome!" Yuu crowed. "We saved you a sandwich, by the way."
"Thanks, I'll grab it later. If you're finished, why don't you come and give me a hand setting this up? You're smaller than me, you'll be able to get into the gap behind the TV much easier."
It turned out to be a generally bad idea to get Tithi involved in anything involving wires, and after the third time of untangling him from a nest of them Tsubasa kindly suggested that he move to the sofa and pet Eagle for a while – an unusual offer that Tithi took gladly.
It was about ten minutes later that Tsubasa gave a cry of victory and the TV flickered into life, showing a brief clip of a hand-drawn snowman on a motorbike before Tsubasa hit stop and it went black.
"Done it! Come on, Yuu, get out from behind there."
"Wait a minute," Tithi said, sounding worried. "It's something you had in Canada, right? So it's in Canadian? I… I can't speak Canadian, I won't know what's going on."
That made Tsubasa laugh, his eyes shining in the lights from the Christmas tree. "No, it's fine, Tithi. There's no words in it, except one song, and that's more about the music than the words. I can translate for you anyway, if you want."
"Oh." Tithi seemed to perk up somewhat, and he tucked his legs up underneath himself to get comfortable. "That's so nice of you, thank you!"
"No problem. Anyway, let's see if this is still working all the way through..."
.
Twenty-five minutes later, Tithi and Yuu were still gazing open-mouthed, taken by surprise at the ending of the story.
"That was..." Yuu began, trying to find the right words. "Wow."
Tithi put his head on Yuu's shoulder and sniffed. "I didn't want him to go."
Tsubasa reached over and gently ruffled his pink hair. "It's okay, Tithi. Even my grandma used to tear up at this film."
"Can we watch it again?" Tithi asked suddenly, sitting up. "I want to see the dance again."
"Of course," Tsubasa said. "I've just got to rewind it first."
"What's rewind?"
"It's not like a DVD, where you just go back to the beginning automatically. You have to rewind the tape in the machine if you want to watch it again. Watch!"
And to Tithi and Yuu's delight, the film they had just watched suddenly started whizzing backwards, soundlessly and much faster than it had gone forwards.
"There you go," Tsubasa said when they were back at the beginning. "You two watch that, I'm going to check on the fruit cake."
"Don't you want to watch it again?" Tithi asked.
Tsubasa smiled at them. "No, it's fine, Tithi. I watched this so many times as a child I'm amazed the tape still works. I've had my share of nostalgia for the day."
Yuu and Tithi settled back down to watch the film over again, this time pointing out to each other the details they'd missed the first time around. When it got to the end of the credits once again, Yuu sighed.
"I guess we should go and put the rest of the decorations up around the windows now," he said.
Tithi nodded. "Um, how do you stop this?" he asked, pointing at the video player. "Or the rewind thing Tsubasa talked about?"
Yuu grimaced. "Not sure," he said. "I'll go ask Tsubasa, hang on."
Tithi sat there, watching as the video continued playing, running into what looked like an advert for something. Then suddenly, without warning, the picture and the sound changed abruptly.
On the screen was a huge, ornate hall lined with pretty windows. Young boys dressed in white and red stood in lines along the walls at one end, faces lit by candles, singing something in a language Tithi didn't know.
And what a song it was. Tithi stared in awe as the sound rolled over him, harmonies shifting and echoing in the stone hall, high and clear as they were joined by a piano with long pipes on it, and then the deeper voices of some older men at the back of the lines. It was the most beautiful thing he'd ever heard.
"What's going on?" Tsubasa asked from the doorway, leaning in to see what the music was. "Oh wow! I forgot that was on that tape."
"What is it?" Tithi asked breathlessly. "It's beautiful."
"Remember I said this was a home-made tape? We taped it over a tape my uncle brought over from Britain one year. That's the Carols From Kings from the year before we taped The Snowman over it."
"What's a carol?"
"It's a special Christmas song. Yuu told you about the way there are religious parts and non-religious parts to Christmas, right? Well, these songs are for the religious side. I like them anyway, they're some of the most beautiful pieces I know. This is from a performance they give every year in the King's College chapel in Cambridge in Britain. It's world-famous."
"I love them," Tithi said softly. "What are they singing?"
Tsubasa closed his eyes to listen. "Ah," he smiled. "That's Oh Little Town Of Bethlehem. It's one of my favourites. Do you want me to translate the words for you?"
Tithi shook his head. "No, that's fine, I just want to listen to the music… oh! It's stopped."
"Reached the end of the tape," Tsubasa said. "I remember, there used to be a second tape because the program was longer than you could fit on just one tape. No idea where it is now, of course."
"What about on the internet?" Yuu suggested. "I bet you could find it there."
"Good idea, Yuu. Stay here, Tithi, I'll find my laptop..."
.
Yuu had not told Tithi everything about Christmas. He hadn't mentioned watching films together, or carols, or snowmen, or videos, or trying to untangle tinsel.
But that didn't matter, Tithi decided, because now he had some traditions of his own to keep and treasure. Putting up the tree with Yuu. Going to the shops with Tsubasa to pick that year's new decoration to be added to the tree. Sitting on the sofa in the warm with a mug of sweet, milky tea and a slice of strawberry shortcake, listening to carols on Tsubasa's laptop as the lights on the tree twinkled through the branches, with Tsubasa softly translating the titles on one side of him and Yuu humming harmonies on the other.
Yuu hadn't mentioned how nice it felt to have people to share all of that with either.
.
Some author's notes!
- Canadian Tsubasa is canon with a touch of headcanon. It's canon that he finds a bald eagle chick and nest near his childhood home. Bald eagles are only found in North America so he's definitely from that continent. The headcanon is just picking which part. He easily goes to Japan and seems to have no real link to the Americas any more, so he's probably half-Japanese, half American-or-Canadian. There's a significant Japanese-Canadian population on the west coast of Canada, conveniently mapping right on to the breeding resident areas of the bald eagle territory. So I decided he's Japanese-Canadian.
- I've been constantly aware whilst writing these stories that I'm coming from a Western perspective, specifically a British and Christian one. So I've been trying to frame these stories as secularly and atheistically as I can, because I know not everyone shares that perspective (least of all the Japanese characters I'm writing about!). But this chapter is a bit of an indulgence for me, introducing two British cultural traditions of watching The Snowman and listening to either Carols from Kings or A Feast Of Nine Lessons And Carols, depending on what time it is and whether it's on TV or radio. If you'd like to know more about either of them, either go and look them up, or just drop me a PM and I'll do my best!
- find the Walking In The Air line for a prize*!
*disclaimer: there is no prize except much applause from me
