The candles were lit before I noticed it had gotten dark.

On the morning of the twenty-fourth I walked down to the lake. The water was quiet, the two volcanoes across the way half-wrapped in cloud, and reeds leaned in from both sides of the shore. A weathered wooden post stood at the edge of the stone. I lingered there longer than I needed to. Later I followed the grassy bank around to where the hillside steepens, a few pale houses tucked into the trees just above the waterline, ridges stacked behind them in the haze. By evening I was at a long wooden table under beams and stone walls. Candles between the plates, flatbreads, small dishes, dark ceramic, a cut of roasted meat on a metal grate at the center. People I had only just begun to know stood and sat and leaned in to talk. I did not say much. I held a glass and watched the candles do their slow work on the room. It was Christmas Eve, and I was a long way from anywhere I had ever spent one before, and that felt, quietly, like enough.