“An American?” The man stood up first, then thrust his hand out. His accent made clear he was Australian. “I’m Blue.”
Blue? That was an… interesting name. I shook his hand firmly, and then he turned to his partner.
“This is my wife, Nance.”
“Nice to meet you,” I said as they got up to let me get to my seat. “Mackenzie.”
“We’ll have to call you Macca,” Blue declared once we all got seated. “So you’re headed for New Zealand?”
“New Zealand…!”
No, I thought, dragging my phone out and unlocking it. No, no, no. I couldn’t have gotten the flight wrong. There was no way.
“He’s teasing you,” she said, giving my arm a squeeze. “Aussies have an interesting sense of humour. So you’re heading Down Under for a holiday?”
With a blink, I stared at her, still trying to decipher what she was saying.
“Um… a working holiday,” I said. “On a farm an hour or two outside of Melbourne?”
“Near Ballarat or Colac?” Blue asked, peering past his wife.
“Ah…” I checked the email I’d received from Charlie, my future employer. “Colac, I think.”
“Well, you want to be careful out that way,” he said. My eyes jerked up, meeting his. “That’s dropbear country.”
“Blue…” Nance said with a shake of her head.
“I know dropbears aren’t real,” I said, my eyes narrowing.
“Bunyips?” he said hopefully.
“What the hell is a bunyip?” I asked.
“Now you’ve got him started…” Nance said with a sigh.
We settled back in our seats, belts pulled low and tight, and as the flight attendants went through the safety procedures, Blue told me more about some of Australia’s cryptids.
The flight was long, cramped, exhausting, but Blue loved to talk. He told me story after story until his eyes grew heavy and he leaned back to go to sleep.
“Talk the leg off an iron pot, that man,” Nance said. “Thank you for being so patient with him.”
“It’s fine,” I said, not really seeing her. It was the visions his words had conjured that filled my head, colouring my dreams as I pressed my head against the headrest of my seat, my eyes falling closed.
“Back to God’s own country,”Blue said with a wild grin, gripping the arms of his seat as the plane began its descent. “You’ll love it here, Macca. Just you wait and see.”
But I didn’t need convincing. Peering out the window, I watched the sprawl of Melbourne become clearer and clearer as we spiralled down. The high-rise buildings, the size of the city surprised me. Not because it was big, but because I didn’t associate Australia with cities that was comparable to LA. The plane landed and disembarking was a somewhat disorientatingthing. Row 24 was my whole world for more than a day, and now I emerged out into yet another busy airport.
“So you’ve got somewhere to stay?” Nance asked with a look of concern. She was a such a mom.
“At a hostel just outside the airport.”
She looked at Blue, her brows furrowed, but he slung his arm around her shoulders and gave it a squeeze.
“Macca will be right, won’t ya, love?”
It felt like I knew what each one of those words were, but put together like that took work to decipher.
“I’ll be fine and thanks for all the stories.”
