Rose fingered her medallion pensively as she walked back to the barracks after the end of her shift. She couldn't help it: She felt depressed.
"I'm sick of today. Why can't it be tomorrow yet?" she muttered aloud to herself.
Work today hadn't been anything out of the ordinary, but that was kind of the problem. If Rose were back home on Hays Minor, you see, she wouldn't have been working at all today.
Because today would have been Chaestvali. Chaestvali, the Feast of the Bountiful Harvest.
Most of Rose's colleagues in the Resistance assumed her medallion was supposed to represent a comet or a meteor. Maybe a crescent moon—lots of systems took moons as their symbol, so why not Otomok? But in fact it was none of those things. It was a leaf.
Not just any leaf, though. Haysian snowgrape leaves weren't just any leaf. They rolled themselves into silvery-white, bugle-like funnels as they matured on the vine, tight enough that they could hold half a liter of water without leaking. They were also edible, and the Tico family used to spend the day before Chaestvali preparing fillings for them. Ground meat and spices. Fruits, nuts, and starch paste. Crunchy wholegrain and treacle swirl. There were so many different preparations that Rose struggled to remember them all.
Then on Chaestvali, the one day every mine in the Otomok System was closed, they'd feasted. It had been Rose's favorite day of the entire year, and she'd gorged herself shamelessly. Paige'd used to tease her about it. "There're plenty of snowgrape leaves to go around, Rose," she'd say, giggling. "No need to overfill."
Rose hadn't paid her big sister any attention. Her leaves were always bulging.
As she stepped into the quiet shade of the barracks, Rose sighed. This was D'Qar, not Hays Minor, and there was no Chaestvali on D'Qar. Truth be told, there was no Chaestvali on Hays Minor, either—can't celebrate the harvest when there's nothing to harvest anymore. The First Order's ecological destruction had seen to that. The snowgrape vine was probably extinct.
Gods, it made Rose so angry! She threw her rucksack onto her bunk with exaggerated violence. If only—she could just—
"Rose."
"Yeah, what?" Rose swiped hurriedly at her face with the back of her hand, brushing the tears away before Paige could see them.
"Happy Chaestvali," Paige said. She was holding two stuffed snowgrape leaves, and they were so full they were positively bulging. She passed one to Rose.
"Where…? Paige, where did you get—"
"Don't ask." Paige's expression was wry. "But I could only get two, so I may have gone a bit overboard with the fillings…"
Rose laughed, took a giant bite of stuffed leaf, chewed, and swallowed. Aaahhh, delicious. It tasted of home. Of childhood. Of family. "Nah, it's perfect! Happy Chaestvali, Paige."
And it was.
END