After both eating two huge slices of an amazing chocolate fudge cake, they get their stuff together. The old man is back now, sitting at the bar and watching them. He puts one foot on the ground and looks like he might stand up and come over to them. But then he shakes his head and sits back on the stool again, turning away. They wave goodbye then head up the road the woman mentioned, crossing a small bridge. It’s freezing so Amber bunches her hands up in her heavily insulated gloves, the joints of her bad hand aching.

They reach a farm and walk up a stone track. Icy trees bend over them, providing some shelter from the cold winds. Amber feels something land on her cheek and glances up.

‘Great, more snow,’ she says. It’s light though, falling in slow and carefree circles towards them. But Amber has a feeling it will grow heavier. She quickens her step as they head uphill, Lumin too clearly thinking the same. Amber thinks about stopping to take photos. It’s truly beautiful with the peaks of the mountain in the distance and the ice-laced fields surrounding them, a hint of the loch below. But she doesn’t want to be stuck up there in three feet of snow.

The track trails off into icy fields and Amber pauses a moment. ‘Have we gone the right way? There’s no wall any more.’

But Lumin isn’t listening. Instead, she’s staring ahead at a sheet of ice.

‘The waterfall,’ she says.

‘Waterfall? It doesn’t look like a waterfall.’ Then it dawns on Amber. ‘It’s frozen!’

Lumin nods, a wide smile on her face as she strides up the field towards a wooden bridge. She’s so fast, Amber has to jog to keep up with her. As she draws closer to the frozen waterfall, her mouth drops open. She’s never seen a waterfall like this before, let alone one that’s frozen in time. The once falling water has turned into a hazy sheet of silver-white, droplets of water now snow-encrusted stalactites around it. It feels to Amber as though she is watching a film that has paused, the once gushing motion of water completely still. The loch is frozen too, the water that once erupted in spurts from the impact of the waterfall now frozen into a cloud of ice. The air is eerily quiet, as though the animals, usually so used to the constant sound of the waterfall, have been muted in shock at its absence.

The hairs on the back of Amber’s neck stand up. It’s really quite something. Lumin must feel the same too as she is frozen to the spot, staring up at the silver stream with wide eyes.

‘It’s amazing, isn’t it?’