Mac Breagach breathed in the misty air as he stepped off the plane. He thought to himself that it was the smell of home on the gentle breeze, thinking he could recognise it even though he had never breathed in this air, or stepped foot on this soil, in the entire thirty years since the day his mother pushed him out. A few seconds later he coughed and spluttered, and just for a second the thought crossed his jet lagged mind that what he was smelling might actually be the industrial smog of a seriously unmaintained factory. That would explain why the smell seemed so familiar, given that Mac had been a factory man all his life. He quickly pushed those thoughts from his mind, however, and forced his brain to repeat the truth over and over again that it was simply the hard-hitting smell of home and the reason it had hit him so hard was the emotional weight of that moment in which he had finally come home for the first time in his life.

He was jostled out of that serene moment of spiritual connection to the land by the screaming of the enormous woman behind him in the queue to exit the plane, who made it very clear that a lifetime of unhealthy habits had somehow not made any impact whatsoever on her lung capacity, a trait she had also managed to pass on to the four children behind her who were only smaller than her in the sense that they were not as tall. So it was that Mac descended from the body of the plane to the sound of a nightmarish opera of complaint, with the somehow both booming and shrill voice of the woman insisting that all the alcohol in the city would run dry if she did not get out of the plane right this instant and her four backup screamers insisting not quite as loudly but still loud enough that they had been promised a day of rafting and a day of rafting they would have.

Once he had managed to get inside the airport, and distance himself from his fellow passengers that he, moments ago, had decided to name The Banshee and her four Furies, Mac was able to stop and take in the first sight of his ancestral homeland that greeted both new travellers and old souls returning home in new bodies, as Mac had described himself to his entire family ever since planning this trip two years, seven months and thirteen days ago, that sight of course being the interior of the airport. It was an extremely welcoming place. Mac knew it was, because there were welcome signs everywhere he looked. There were huge block capital welcomes hanging from the ceiling, and little welcome stickers stuck to all the door handles. Welcome was spelled in neon to the left, and graffitied all over the walls to the right, and presumably both had been done by some very talented up-and-coming artist that people should keep their eye on. Counting had never been Mac’s area of expertise, but when he was looking around the interior of the airport at all the welcomes surrounding him he made a conservative guess that they numbered in the hundreds of thousands.

As he made his way towards the exit of the terminal, Mac was surprised to see a short and baby-faced man in an immaculate suit waving to him while holding a large sign with his name on it. The man, after seeing Mac stop and look over, proceeded to dance a merry jig and twirled and twisted and kicked his legs to a rhythm all inside his own head until the jig landed him, without a single crinkle in his suit, directly in front of Mac and allowed him to extend his hand to within grasping distance.

“Good merry morrow to you my fine travelling friend. I cannot, and I repeat I simply cannot adequately express my purest delight, for even daring to compare the purity of my delight to the purity of the famously pure salt of the west coast of our fair nation would be an understatement, my purest delight to be here making the acquaintance of the one and only Mac Breagach!”

Mac, of course, had taken the man’s hand and shaken it firmly, because his father had always told him that to greet a man without a firm handshake was like spitting your beer in the face of the friend who had just bought you the pint, and Mac had not wanted to appear rude especially on this momentous day in which he was finally coming home. He was, however, confused as to several aspects of the situation, namely who this man was and why he was so excited to meet Mac, given that Mac himself was nobody of any great importance.

“Good God how rude of me! In all this excitement I completely forgot to introduce myself! I’ll beg forgiveness of course, but I’m sure any reasonable man would not condemn a simple fool like myself for being carried away by the presence of such an honoured guest. My name is Leopold Thatcher and I am, I’m sure a brilliant man like yourself is already aware, I am the Minister of Welcomes, Hotels, and Enjoyment for the Government of the great nation of Hibernia!”

At that point the Minister had bowed deeply, so deeply in fact that his nose squashed against the airport floor and carried back up with it a smudge of dirt that Mac did not have the wherewithal to address before his still outstretched hand was taken once again and pulled towards the door.

“My bags-”

“Will be brought to your hotel room at once Mac! May I call you Mac? You see Mac, my good man, as Minister for Hotels it would be a disgrace, no, a scandal! Truly a scandal I say, if I were to allow a guest of our great and welcoming nation to carry their own bags to their hotel. It wouldn’t do at all at all at all I tell you! Why, they would demote me! Put me in charge of a much less important branch of the Government, like the Department of People Having Food, or, and I tell you Mac I shudder at the thought! Or the Department of Stopping Things Going Extinct!”

Now Mac had never considered himself to be a particularly clever man, but it had always occurred to him that people having food and stopping things going extinct were quite important things to do. However, given that he was not, by his own admission, a particularly clever man and Mr. Thatcher was a Government Minister, he supposed that he must have been mistaken and that, in fact, welcomes and hotels and enjoyment were truly the important things in life. Whatever the case may be, it did occur to Mac that it was probably a good thing that he, as an old soul returning to Hibernia in a new body, was in the company of a man who believed in the importance of him feeling welcomed, enjoying himself, and of course having a hotel to stay in.

Once dragged outside, he could see that there was a limo waiting for him. A limo that was painted in the green, gold, and grey colours of the Hibernian flag. He would have known that the limo was for him even without Mr. Thatcher pulling him towards it like a small terrier that had caught on to a scent. The reason he would have known, without the grace of being a clever man, was that his name was painted onto the side of the car in unnecessarily large block capital letters. Once both men were inside the limo took off at speed, swerving around cars and narrowly avoiding small congregations of tourists in novelty t-shirts attempting to cross the road. The drive into the city was mostly uneventful, with Mr. Thatcher nattering on ad nauseum about this and that, mainly the history of Greylake, the thousand year old capital city of Hibernia. At least, that was the topic Mac assumed was the subject of the rather one-sided conversation from the snippets he took on board during the brief periods he zoned in.

“Mac? My good friend? I can of course request that the driver stop at the nearest convenience to pick you up something more to your liking, should that be what you would like?”

The mention of his name jolted Mac out of his thoughtless window gazing and he turned to face his travelling companion.

“I’m sorry, could you repeat that?”

“Well I can of course Mac! In fact, I would consider it an honour to repeat myself on this matter, as I can see that you are a thoughtful, nay, I would even say philosophically minded gentleman and of course once is not nearly enough for a great mind like your own to give the proper consideration to any matter. But the question at hand, the one I am repeating for you now, is whether I can interest you, after such a long flight, in wetting your taste buds with this city’s, no, this country’s, most famous beverage! The esteemed, esteemed like yourself you see, the esteemed GreyBrew Stout!”

It was at that point that Mac realised, nestled between the two of them, which he had somehow missed before when he got into the limo, there was a full keg complete with beer tap where the middle seat should be. So he nodded, affirming his desire to wet his taste buds, as Mr. Thatcher had put it. After all, every Hibernian Mac had ever met, mainly in the Hiberian themed bars and pubs that seemed to dot every street corner in New Yank City, which Mac would call home except for the fact that Hibernia was his true home, they had all insisted that the GreyBrew Stout they were being served was terrible and the only good pint of GreyBrew Stout to be found was in the pubs of Hiberia, and especially the pubs of Greylake. Perhaps, he thought, it was time to try a real pint of the dark stuff. It was as he finished that thought that Mr. Thatcher finished pulling his pint and handed it to him.

“Ah, GreyBrew Stout. A Hibernian’s only friend, they say. It’s been brewed in Greylake for a thousand years now, using the water from the mighty River Sticks that flows down from the Pale Mountains and cuts our fair city in half from North to South. It’s the river water that gives it that beautiful ebony colour, you see”

Mr. Thatcher winked as he said this, before sipping at his own pint. A look crossed the Minister’s face in that moment that might have suggested that he did not altogether enjoy the taste of the drink, but Mac pushed those thoughts away as the idea of a Hibernian who did not enjoy the deep rich flavour of GreyBrew Stout was ridiculous. Malarkey of the highest order, his grandfather and father would both say at the mere suggestion of it. As it was, Mac tried his own pint and his first reaction was that there was no real difference between it and the pints he had been drinking in New Yank City for years. That, of course, was impossible, as impossible as the idea that Mr. Thatcher was not enjoying his drink. It was the jet lag, Mac thought to himself, either that or this car pint was of a lesser quality than a proper pint of GreyBrew Stout from a proper, authentic Hibernian pub. That seemed like a reasonable explanation, so Mac settled back and assured his host that his pint was far better than any he had tasted before.

Pulling into the city of Greylake was how Mac imagined the scene of a simple hunter-gatherer of the Stone Age being brought through the glorious streets of those ancient advanced civilisations he occasionally pretended to watch documentaries about when he had guests over to his tiny studio apartment on the outskirts of New Yank City. He marvelled at the tall buildings, but not at their height. New Yank City had some of the tallest buildings in the entire world. But they were blocks of glass, steel and concrete serving a function and then calling it a day. The buildings of GreyLake were designed as pieces of art, sculptures lining their walls of marble and gold. Modern building techniques combined with an artistic flair that rivaled the architects of ancient Rome and Greece.

“They are beautiful, aren’t they Mac my friend? As Minister for Hotels, and I know it will come as no surprise to a practical philosopher such as yourself that Minister for Hotels is my proudest title, but as Minister I told my colleagues in Government that no expense could be spared in the building of our hotels! Why, imagine the shame if a man such as you were to grace Hibernia and Greylake with your presence and the focal point of your visit, your place of rest and relaxation, your base from which to drink in the city’s pleasure, your HOTEL, imagine the shame if it wasn’t perfect?! Why, I would have to renounce my Hibernian bloodline and cast myself into exile!”

“So all of these, all of them are hotels?”

Mr. Thatcher nodded in the affirmative, and began to rant again about the importance of hotels and his honour as a Minister. Mac turned to look out the window once more, now sipping at the last dregs of his pint in a subconscious attempt to put off the moment when his host would ask him if he would like another. The buildings, the hotels, were truly stunning. A nagging thought did creep into the back of Mac’s mind, though, as the droning of Mr. Thatcher buzzed in the background like an extremely lazy swarm of flies. If every beautiful building was a hotel, and every single building Mac could see was indeed beautiful, then there did not seem to be many, or any, places to put houses and apartments that people could live in full time. Before he could vocalise the question, the Minister ordered the driver to stop and open the limo’s sunroof so that he and mac could stand up and look around.

“This, Mac my friend, this is Funchapel, the jewel of the Westside! Now some people might tell you that the Westside is a bit rough, or that there are bad areas and poorer neighbourhoods. Rubbish I tell you, if you’ll forgive my language. That might have been true in the past, but the historic wealth of the Eastside has crossed the river and now all of Greylake is the picture of affluence. Just look around at all the entertainment that Funchapel has to offer, being of course the primary entertainment district of the Westside and dare I say it, Greylake as a whole!”

Mac did look around. The first thing he saw were the very famous statues of Peter the Perv and Harriet the Harlot, surrounded by tourists taking the same predictable photos as the hundreds of others who came here every year with no real connection to the place, not like Mac. Peter, with a menacing grin and his hands outstretched, provided the perfect photo opportunity for those female tourists who wished to place their chests against the statue’s palms and look horrified. Harriet, on the other hand, was depicted on her knees with a look of delight on her face, giving the usually overweight bald men a chance to pretend to be undoing their belts in front of her while posing. The story behind the statues was long lost, and the guidebooks only ever made mention of the lewd uses tourists had found for Peter and Harriet.

Beyond the statues, Mac saw a small crowd gathered around a solitary chunk of wall in the middle of the cobblestone street, all of them with their phones out and trained intently on the spot directly in front of the chunk of wall. As they watched, a man walked at a brisk pace over the spot before slipping, his legs flying up into the air, and landing flat on his back. No one moved to help him, rather after a few seconds the crowd began to clap, and the man pulled himself to his feet and stiffly bowed several times.

“Ah, ‘The Man on the Ice’! One of our national treasures, you know. Live on National Television all those years ago, some guy walks past the news camera and absolutely flattens himself! The footpath was very icy, you see, and he wasn’t wearing the appropriate footwear for such conditions so of course he was going to slip. But to do it on live Television! It was all anyone could talk about for months! As Minister for Enjoyment, I knew I had to preserve such a moment to forever bring a smile to the faces of all Hibernians and our fantastic guests! I’m so glad you got to see that Mac. The Department of Stopping Unprofitable Injuries unfortunately insist that we can only do one show of ‘The Man on the Ice’ per day, something about back injuries or some other trivial nonsense”

Mac had already stopped listening to Mr. Thatcher’s complaints over the strictness of the Department of Stopping Unprofitable Injuries, as his attention had been drawn across the street to the troupe of brightly dressed dancers outfitted in emerald green and bright pink, weaving in and out among the throngs of tourists throwing what looked like gold coins into the air.

“Hibernia’s own gold fairies! They’re our national animal, Mac, giving out gold to make sure that everyone who visits our great nation feels as welcomed as possible! I’ll let you in on a little secret though, Mac my good friend”

At this Mr. Thatcher leaned in closer as if to whisper in Mac’s ear.

“Those… Aren’t… Real gold fairies! Haha, those are actors employed by my Department to give a little bit of magic to our guests like you! Those gold coins aren’t real either, they’re chocolate, which if you ask me is absolutely magical in its own right. But I tell you this because I have no doubt that an astute and frankly philosophical man such as yourself had already figured all that out, and as one honourable man to another I’m sure I can trust you to keep this little secret between us two gentlemen, eh?”

Mr. Thatcher winked again and then retreated back into the limo, disappearing like a fox into its den and gesturing for Mac to follow. The limo started back up again and weaved its way through the narrow side streets, a feat that should have been impossible for a car that size. However, when they emerged from the alleys onto the road along the west bank of the River Sticks, Mac had to admit that not once did the sides of the limo so much as brush off the polished marble walls. He was contemplating asking Mr. Thatcher exactly how many times his driver had taken that exact route when the limo stopped again and this time the Minister opened his door and gentured for Mac to follow him.

“Now Mac my friend, if you look below us here you’ll see what is absolutely the crowning achievement of our Government’s efforts to make Greylake the perfect city, the River Sticks White Water Rafting Facility! I helped of course, as Minister for Enjoyment, but the project was mainly overseen by the boys and girls down at the Department of Physical But Still Fun Activities. Truth be told we can lock horns a bit over jurisdiction, but I don’t have a bad word to say about them when they deliver facilities like this!”

Mac could see why the four Furies on the plane had been insisting on the Banshee taking them rafting. The facility had been built at the river’s widest point before it emptied out into the Hibernian Sea, which had allowed for the construction of numerous obstacle courses among the swirling foamy waters. The sounds of children and adults screaming in delight echoed around the surrounding streets as they enjoyed themselves paddled through stronger or weaker currents, depending on which course they had chosen to enter.

“Mr. Thatcher, this looks amazing but I have to ask. The Sticks is a slow moving and tidal river by the time it reaches Greylake, isn’t it?

The Minister raised his eyebrow and nodded slowly, remaining surprisingly quiet, as if he had sensed that a follow up question was coming.

“Well, if I’m honest I don’t think I’m as smart as you think I am because I just can’t figure out how you make the rapids!”

At that point Mr. Thatcher had laughed, not in the way that people often do when attempting to be polite in the seconds after a mediocre joke has been told, but in the way that people do while watching another person have an unexpected, though not too serious, accident. Such as a man slipping on ice on live television. The laughter lasted several minutes, a long enough time that the rafters below had begun to look up with apprehension on their faces in the mistaken belief that it was some unknown mistake they had made, being unaccustomed to the regularities of this foreign country, that had prompted the merriment above. When Mr. Thatcher finally did stop laughing, he still could not keep a broad grin off of his face, even with tears of joy streaming down his cheeks.

“Oh Mac, oh you delightful fellow. I must say my friend, and I do mean my friend in the sense that you are now a person in my life who brings me great joy for what else really could a friend be? Mac my friend, let’s take a walk shall we? A stroll down the river to the answer you seek. I must say, and I don’t say this to everyone, but I must say that you are by far my favourite honoured guest in a very long time”

So Mac and Mr. Thatcher walked along the bank of the River Sticks, the Minister occasionally waving down to the tourists enjoying themselves white water rafting on the river, and every so often he would ask Mac if Hibernia’s honoured guest would like to stop into one of the many Constellation Coffee shops or Forks pubs that lined the streets and Mac would reply that it was ok, they had both of those franchises back in New Yank City and since the whole point of a chain is to have lots of carbon copies of your business he did not see the need for him to visit them here. After maybe ten minutes of walking upriver Mr. Thatcher stopped and pointed back down to the water. When Mac looked down he saw large metal poles stretching across the river from bank to bank, dozens, maybe hundreds of them going up the river as far as the eye could see. And strapped to each pole were dozens of people, all of them kicking their legs as fast as they could. With their hands they performed a multitude of activities, from smoking cigarettes to reading books. On the far end of the closest pole there was even a woman knitting what appeared to be a jumper. No matter what they did to preoccupy themselves their legs never stopped kicking and it was the kicking that was churning up the waters of the River Sticks to such a great extent that it remained perfect for white water rafting even as it flowed south towards the Hibernian Sea.

“You don’t think you’re smart, Mac my friend, but this is not something most people should try to judge their own intelligence off of. This is genius made incarnate, Mac, the will and inspiration of the Gods themselves made manifest! Even an astute and philosophically minded man such as yourself, for I have no doubt that the world has found a modern day Plato in you Mac, but even a man with a keen mind such as your own would struggle to think of this genius explanation for the rapids in the slow moving River Sticks. In truth, Greylake used to be beset by the most ghastly of blights, and I’m not talking about the Plague, Mac, though we had a bit of that too in the past, like everywhere else. No, our most ghastly blight was the plague of homelessness. These poor creatures used to line the streets, vomiting and pissing on the marble and disturbing our honoured guests with their smell and their begging. Then, yours truly had the genius idea you see before you. The Department of Physical But Still Fun Activities was struggling with the whole ‘lack of rapids on the Sticks’ problem, so I solved it for them and cleaned up the streets too. They got their white water rafting, the homeless are finally contributing to society, and I got a city that's more welcoming and enjoyable for our honoured guests coming to stay in our hotels”

Rather than comment on Mr. Thatcher’s genius idea, Mac simply suggested that given the long nature of the flight between New Yank City and Greylake it might be wise for the Minister to bring him to his hotel so that he could rest and truly enjoy the city tomorrow, an idea that Mr. Thatcher seemed almost as enthralled with as his own idea to use homeless people to power the white water rafting facility. The limo journey was almost eerily quiet for the remainder of the evening, save for Mr. Thatcher insisting that Mac have another pint of GreyBrew Stout, as aside from being highly nutritious and curing several diseases Mac had never heard of, it was also apparently an excellent sleeping tonic. The pint glass was empty for the second time that day when the limo pulled up in front of the luxury Vulture Hotel on Fund Street, and both men again exited the vehicle to shake hands.

“Well Mac my friend, this is where we part ways. I will of course try to see you again during your stay, because as I said earlier I have come to think of you as a real friend to me in this short space of time we have known each other, but for the rest of your time here one of my Super Junior Ministers for Welcomes, Hotels and Enjoyment will show you around”

“Minister Thatcher, can I ask you one thing before you go?”

“Of course my very good friend, anything at all”

“Can you tell me where to find the High King Pub?”

Once the words had left his lips, Mac began to think that he may have made a mistake. His reasoning for thinking this was that Mr. Thatcher stiffened up and his eyes narrowed and the next words he spoke had a much colder air about them than the joyous rambles that had been flowing off his tongue all day.

“Well, Mr. Breagach, technically speaking you’re standing in front of it. The High King Pub closed down during the Plague, you see. Completely unavoidable. But, since my Department already owned all the land around the pub it was decided that the best course of action was to knock down all the buildings, including the shell of the pub, and begin construction of the Vulture Hotel. And with that, Mr. Breagach, I bid you goodbye”

Up in his room, Mac saw that Mr. Thatcher had not been lying when he said that the bags would be brought to the hotel. He sat down on the bed and reached into his suitcase to pull out the photograph in the inside pocket. On the back was scribbled ‘Our First Date’ in barely legible handwriting. When he flipped the photo over, as he had done so many times before, he could see the two black and white figures smiling out at him. A man and a woman, both smiling broadly, probably drunkenly, pints of GreyBrew Stout raised high in a toast to a celebration that nobody still alive remembered. Behind the couple hung the Hibernian flag, and above that was a sign spelling out in delicate, flowing letters, ‘The High King Pub’. Where his great-grandparents had first met. For all he knew, Mac could have been sitting in the exact same spot they were when the photo was taken, plus ten stories that is.

Mac put away the photo and looked up at the beige ceiling of his hotel room. He still felt that he had come home for the first time in his life, that he had more of a connection with Hibernia than he ever felt growing up in New Yank City. At the same time, he couldn’t help feel as though something important and fundamental was missing from the soul of Greylake, something without which the whole city was questioning who it really was. When he tucked himself into bed for the night, Mac’s last thought was that some white water rafting in the morning would probably cheer him up.