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Snow was descending in large, fat flakes onto the Resistance base at D'Qar when Poe Dameron remembered that he hadn't checked the calendar in nearly two months.
Poe had been lying on his back underneath his X-wing, doing some repairs (there had been a hard battle with the First Order a few days ago, and a TIE fighter had laid some good hits on him). When he reached out his hand for a wrench sitting in his toolbox, a snowflake had fallen from between the cracks of the hangar's roof and alighted on the back of his hand. Poe could never remember to check the calendar any other time of the year, but when the leaves began to change colors or the snow began to fall or the first spring flowers poked up through the patches of grass on the Resistance's makeshift airstrip, then he remembered the stories his mother had told him.
Poe rolled out from under his X-wing. “Hey, buddy!” he called. BB-8 came rolling over, chirping excitedly—it was always excited about something. “What day is it today?”
BB-8 began beeping, but Poe cut it off. “No, not the Galactic Standard calendar, the other calendar.”
The droid rolled its head forward in an approximation of a nod, and chirped some more.
“24 Kislev?” Poe asked, and BB-8 blooped a confirmation. “Oh, man, I really cut it close this year, huh?” He walked out of the hangar, looking up at the sky. He had begun his repairs in the early afternoon, but he had been under the X-wing for longer than he thought, as the sun was already sinking low into the sky, flirting with the horizon. Poe turned back to BB-8. “Okay, buddy, better run if we want to make it in time!” And he took off towards the main buildings of the Resistance base, BB-8 rolling behind him.
Poe wasn't out of place dashing through the corridors of the Resistance base; there was always someone running around the base in a hurry. Most of those people, though, paid attention to where they were going. Poe had barely run a few feet into the building when he crashed into Finn and Rey.
The two of them had been inseparable since Rey had finished tracking down the General's brother wherever he had been hiding. They spent pretty much all day together, when Rey wasn't doing her Jedi training or Finn wasn't talking with the Resistance Intelligence officers about the First Order's weaknesses. It wasn't that Poe was lonely—he was used to doing his own thing, and he was never alone when BB-8 was with him. But while Rey had been traveling the galaxy, Poe thought he had become close friends with Finn, and now he felt like a third wheel. He didn't really know Rey at all, and Finn must have missed her while she was gone. It seemed cruel to barge his way into whatever the two of them had going on. Besides, there was always another battle to be fought with the First Order; nowadays, Poe hardly ever spent more than a few days on D'Qar at one time.
So when Poe looked up and realized who he had literally bumped into, he shot them both his most winning smile, the one Jess Pava had said could charm a Hutt. “Sorry, can't talk,” he said, clasping them both on the shoulder quickly and then running past them. “See you later!” he shouted over his shoulder, and turned the corner leading towards his room.
Finn and Rey turned to watch Poe run off, and then looked at each other. “That was not normal, right?” Rey asked.
“Poe never does that smile unless he's purposefully trying to charm you,” Finn said. “So yes, I would say something's up. Let's go figure out what it is.”
Rey grinned—another mystery of the Resistance for the two of them to solve together. Finn grabbed her hand, and the two ran off after Poe.
Poe had reached his room just as the sun was threatening to dip below the horizon, with BB-8 close on his heels. He dropped to his hands and knees, stretching his arms out under his bunk and fishing for the bag he had stashed in the shadows. It was his inheritance, in a sense: the little family heirlooms that had been left to him when his parents had died. Poe dug through the bag until he found the menorah as well as a couple of spare candles, left miraculously unbroken at the bottom of the bag from last year. He would have to try and scrounge up some more for the following seven days, though candles were rare and difficult to come by.
Poe cleared off a datapad and a couple of spare socks from the top of his shelving unit and delicately placed the menorah on top, pushing a candle into its respective well. He held out the second candle to BB-8, and the droid flicked its lighter out and set the candle aflame. The sun was dipping below the hills of D'Qar by now; he closed his eyes, took a deep breath, and said the words his mother had taught him. “Baruch atah Adonai Eloheynu Melech ha'olam asher kidshanu b'mitzvotah vetzivanu lehadlik ner shel chanukah.”
Poe was lighting the second candle when a voice came from behind him: “What language was that?” It took all his self control not to drop the candle and set his entire room on fire, but he somehow managed to finish lighting the candle and ensure both candles were safely in their wells before turning around.
“Hey, Finn and Rey, how long have you guys been skulking in my doorway?”
“Only a couple of seconds!” Rey protested.
“You did that smile,” Finn said by way of explanation, though Poe didn't think it was much of one. “The suspicious one. We had to know what was up.”
“Nothing's up,” Poe said. “I just had to light a candle.”
“Where did you get candles from?” asked Rey as she slipped further into the doorway. “I'm impressed.”
“And why are you lighting them?” Finn added, also sliding his way into Poe's room. He folded his arms in a way that Poe knew was an attempt at being casual even while earnest. Poe was a little touched: if he was going to be honest, this was the most human-friend interaction he'd had in weeks.
“It's for a holiday,” Poe explained. “My mother taught me about it when I was little, and she always lit the candles when I was growing up. It lasts eight nights, and every night you light a new candle.”
Rey and Finn looked at him, lost; neither were well-versed in holidays. “Are you...marking the passage of time?” Rey asked. She paused for a second, thoughtful. “Back when I--” (When I was living alone, on Jakku) “--when I was younger, I counted from the shortest day of the year to when the sun grew higher. I hated how dark it always got.”
“Well, the way my mother always told it,” Poe began, and he heard his voice falling into Shara Bey's familiar cadences, “was that we light the candles to remember a great battle our ancestors fought a long time ago.”
Finn and Rey sat down on Poe's bunk to listen. Poe continued, “My mother said that well before she and my father moved to Yavin 4, our ancestors came from a small moon far in the Outer Rim. They were oppressed and beaten down by those who lived on the planet the moon orbited. The planet-dwellers hated the moon-dwellers: hated their culture, their traditions, their art and their stories. And as time went on, the planet-dwellers decided that this culture had to stop. That the moon-dwellers must become just like the planet-dwellers.
“The moon-dwellers—my ancestors—wouldn't let this happen. They were so much smaller in numbers than the planet-dwellers, but they were determined. They took to their makeshift fighters to drive off any planet-dwellers who tried to visit the moon to impose their will, and every moon-dweller took up arms to resist the incursion of the sun-dwellers. They weren't trained like the planet-dweller's professional army, but they fought back with all their might. And after a hard, brutal battle, they won.
“We keep lighting candles today to remember how even when the odds looked dark, and they thought there was no way they could stand up against the planet-dwellers, our ancestors' hope burned bright in the dark, and how that hope allowed them to defeat their oppressors.”
Rey and Poe were silent for a moment, and Poe was too. His mother would have told it better, he thought. Finally, Rey spoke up. “Is it a true story?” she asked.
“It doesn't really matter if it's true though, right?” Finn added. “It's a good story.”
Poe smiled a little. “That's what my mother always told me when I asked her whether it was a true story. That it didn't matter, it was still a good story.” He sat down on his bunk next to Finn, suddenly exhausted. Maybe not suddenly: it had been a long and hard few weeks, though he hadn't allowed himself to acknowledge it. The candles were bright against the glowing darkness of his room; Finn placed one arm around Poe and one around Rey.
“Thank you for telling it to us,” Rey said. “It is a good story.”
They sat in silence for a moment longer, until the loudspeaker in the hallway broke their peace. “Black Squadron and Red Squadron, meet in the hangar for mission briefing. Repeat: Black Squadron and Red Squadron, meet in the hangar for mission briefing.”
Poe groaned. He was so tired.
“We can watch the candles for you,” Finn said. “We'll make sure you don't burn down the entire Resistance base.”
“Thanks,” Poe said. He reached over to give both Finn and Rey a tight hug, which lasted a bit longer than normal. “I'll see you both when we get back. Take down a few TIEs, give the First Order a run for their money, and then I'll be back before you know it.” He stood up, grabbing his flight suit and gear from a shelf. “C'mon, buddy,” he called to BB-8, and then walked towards the door.
“Take care of yourself,” Finn said.
Rey nodded. “Don't let the light go out.”
Poe gave them a mock salute, and headed out the door for another battle.
Baruch atah Adonai Eloheinu Melech haolam she-asah nisim laavoteinu v'imoteinu bayamim hahaeim baz'man hazeh.