There once was a place called Sydney. It may have been by the sea.

It may have been the birthplace of Thai food.

I went there, once. I saw it with my very own eyes.

I traveled by way of the sky (a sub-orbital journey of 17.75 hours in the bitter cold).

I saw it, and it was infested. Not with greed or poor taste, as you might expect or even hope, but with something far, far worse.

Flies. They were everywhere, and there were billions of them.

The air itself was clotted a sickly, pulsing black. The faces of the innocent providing transport for their tiny bodies. To speak, to eat, to open one’s mouth would have been a terrible mistake — a mistake I was unwilling to make.

The streets of Sydney, it seemed, were not something to be explored so much as hurried through between origin and destination.

Fear accumulated like flies ignoring skin and bone and landing straight on my heart.

Day Two

Luck was on my side.

The active fly population had decreased by the very next day. I mean, it was still horrible, but significantly less so than the day prior.

Perhaps it would be best to exemplify: By the second day, I could walk an entire block and only be horribly accosted thrice, while being irritated almost constantly.

That night, I walked (the decreased flies meant I was able to move, more or less, freely about the city) to a place called Darling Harbour, or something equally oddly named. I walked along the water. It was pretty cool and also visually pleasing.

Also, there was a visit with a dragon. Not in darling harbour, but earlier that day.