Maya thought about it. “Sometimes. But I think I’d miss this more if I left.”

“That’s just the Southern Ocean saying hello.” He straightened and handed her a mug of black tea. “Solstice today. Shortest of the year. Means every day from here gets a little longer.”

Maya typed back: “Freak cold snap = 3°C and raining. I’m in three layers.”

“Feels like sleet,” Maya said, pulling up a milk crate.

Outside, the winter solstice light began its early fade. The hills turned violet. A single kookaburra laughed somewhere in the gloom—not at the cold, Maya decided, but with it.

June had painted the Adelaide Hills in shades of grey and silver. For most of the world, winter meant snowdrifts and sleigh bells, but here in the Blewitt Springs bush, it meant something else entirely—the sharp, clean scent of wet eucalyptus, the drip of fog from stringybark branches, and a cold that didn't bite so much as seep into your bones over days of cloud-hugged stillness.

Her phone buzzed. A message from her mum in Toronto: “First big snow of the season! 20 cm! Are you getting that freak cold snap they mentioned on the news?”

He nodded slowly. “Good answer.”