There was a damn good reason why the Blue Mountains become one of the top tourist attractions in New South Wales, Sydney.

The air was calm, fresh and chilly, the breeze gently brushing Theo's face and in between his locks of hair. The shady silhouette of cool blue mountains stretched tall and wide to the endless sky. Trees of all sizes with many shades of green on their leaves grew in almost every inch of the area, perfectly shading the visitors from the Sun.

His shoes squeaked under his feet as they touched the ground and rocks of the small cliff called The Giant Stairway, mosses growing around it. Small bugs and frogs leapt and crawled, the toe of his shoe pushing a snail aside slightly from bumping into the cane of the old woman walking in front of him.

His hands shoved into his pockets, gently fiddling with his green charm. He looked up to the sky. A backpack slung across his shoulder, he took in a deep breath, and smiled.
"I like it here."

"Talking to yourself again," his companion, older, taller, bulkier, muscular, commented. "Old habits die hard."

"No," he rolled his eyes. "I'm talking to you."

"Thoughtful of you, Theo," he patted the smaller boy's backpack. "But really, don't."

"I actually do like it here."
"And I don't care. There, end of conversation."

He frowned, looking forward, kicking a small pebble by his heels. "Why are you even here, Rick?"

"Mom doesn't trust you. It ain't my fault that you're such a troublemaker, mate, skipping school and lying to mom, I mean, you went out at 7 morning, didn't go to school, and returned at 11 midnight," he said. "So now I had to cancel my date with Stephanie today to look after my bratty brother. Thanks a lot, mate."

The way from Bondi to Gippsland took more than 5 hours.
He decided to ignore him.

The Giant Stairway led straight to Jamison Valley, a location known in mythologies. Heck, the whole Blue Mountains was full of mythologies and tales, from yowie to the battle of Mirigan the tiger cat versus Garangatch the half eel half reptile, to UFO sightings, paranormal ghost sightings, and bunyips.

What he liked about it was how it felt warm and homely to him. A place where he could see a bunch of things others couldn't. Home of native aboriginal tribes like the Gundungurra that guided him in missions multiple times. A wonderful creation of nature that held the Red Hands Cave, where hand stencils of Aboriginal ancestors printed the walls.

Also, the place where grandmother disappeared on the 14th of August 2 years ago, while on a hike, with her daughters and son-in-laws glad of her and her obsession with mythology's absence, not even making an effort of finding her.
He remembered crying, missing her, missing her tales, missing her teaching to hold a knife and twist knots within miliseconds, missing the Rainbow Serpent always slithering in her room under the hems of her skirt.

Let go of the past.
Remember it but let it go.
Take history as a lesson.
But move on or it will corrupt you.

"Right, gran," he whispered under his breath, his brother, Rick, talking on his phone. "I will."

The one thing he didn't like was how general the clue was.
Stupid snake.

Blue Mountains was huge, and big, overall mystical and full of tales. No specific location was mentioned. Not a single bit more clue other than  "Blue Mountains" even after he whispered-yelled at the sleeping snake last night.

The cliff soon led to the valley, the ground hard as rocks, tourists taking pictures of the paranormal view. Theo passed through two teenagers holding hands, and gripped the steel railing, elbows folded. He leaned slightly forward, his eyes gazing over the dead branches of tall trees poking out of dark green tops. The sky had gradients in shades of blue, splotched with white colours of the clouds. The valley before him stretched far endlessly, in pale brown and murky green. Taller than the valley were three big rocks, right beside each other.

The Three Sisters.
Legend told that long ago, three beautiful sisters, Meenhi, Wimlah and Gunnedoo fell in love with three brothers with pretty faces from the Nepean tribe, yet tribal law forbade them to marry. They took the sisters and captured them by force because they did not care about the law and they were, as Theo thought, obsessive, which would make their relationship unhealthy. The act caused a major tribal battle, and at one point, the sisters were in such real danger that a witch doctor changed them to rocks to protect them, but got killed so no one could ever reverse the spell ever again.

In another version of the legend, the three sisters lived with their father, a witch doctor named Tyawan, while a dangerous bunyip lived in a hole nearby. One day Meenhi got scared of a centipede, like Rick always did (he screamed like a girl), and threw a rock to kill it, which made huge noises as it fell off the cliff and angered the sensitive, moody, good-hearing bunyip.
Tyawan casted them to rocks with his magic bone to protect them and turned to a lyre bird. When the bunyip chilled down and returned to its dark hole, Tyawan wanted to turn them back but the bone was nowhere to be found (which was why it was a terrible idea to use a magic bone). All the way until today.

Theo liked the second one better.
The second version had more hope, as the bone could still be found. It was darker, more grim compared to the first, but with hope, in a dark kind of way, as it was said the sisters as rocks could only stare and hope to become humans again.
Theodore liked hope.

Without hope, he wouldn't have embraced his specialty.

"Wow, trees," Rick said dryly. "They look like... Trees. You know, the ones literally everywhere at home?"

"The trees are beautiful," he mused, "But the attraction is the rocks and the mountains there."

"The rocks look like the ones at home too, only bigger. And the mountains, wow, I'm pretty sure I can see it from the internet images. Less tiring, too."

"Quit whining," he sighed, arms folded over the railing. "I didn't force you to come."

"But you made mom force me to come. Gosh, now Steph's upset and-"
Theo decided to ignore his rant, and rested his chin on his knuckles.

He raised out all the noise around him, his eyes darting around. He saw a tiger quoll, an endangered species no bigger than cat with weasel-like features, much like a Tasmanian devil, scrambling out of a small lumpy hole, much like a burrow. White spots filled on its reddish-brown pelage. An endangered animal, rarely heard, and can only be found in Australia.

His ears caught the shrill sound of an electronic game where the players shoot other players. Except, it sounded better, more beautiful. He could sense the rhythm, his feet tapping to it.

One, two, three.
One, two, three.
Two, two, three.

His eyebrows furrowed, and he looked around.

Everyone either took pictures or didn't have the phones in their hands at all. His absorbment stopped.
He gasped, and quietly turned back to the scenery.

There, a few metres under him, hidden from plain sight behind a bark of a tree, was a lyrebird. If Theo could focus to catch an eel, focusing on a hiding shy bird was nothing.

Its soft, silky feathers stuck up, the beak and claws taking on an insect. It looked around, and tweeted. Lyrebirds had beautiful tweets. They sounded like a graceful song. Soft, and gentle and meaningful. It was so soft that even Theo found it hard to hear it fully.

And he heard lots of soft ballet songs.

He saw another lyrebird, quite far from the first, jumping on the ground as its round wings bounced.
A lyrebird took off in the open blue sky, stretching it's wings wide, crossing over his head. He felt abuzz in his pocket, peeking to see a slight green glow.

Wait.
He blinked, and observed the flying thing. It circled around the three large rocks multiple times before gliding again.
He squinted at the ones on the ground.

Their wings are small.
They don't fly well.

He looked up. How?
And he knew.

"Oi, Theo, mate!" Rick scowled, crossing his arms across his chest, towering over him. "Did you even hear anything I said?"

"Sorry, not interested."
"Why I-"

He pushed past Rick's arm, and kept his eyes on the gliding bird. Clutching his backpack, and the other his charm, he jogged the opposite way.
He stopped. Something pulled him back by the collar.

"Where do you think you're going?" Rick questioned.

"Rick, come on," he flinched, the bird not stopping, not waiting. He had not much time. "I have to go."

"To see another tree?"

"Look, you don't like it here, right? So let me go where I want, and you can where you want to. I've been here more than you, so I know the way. I'll be here back in like 50 minutes, or at most maybe 5 hours and 30 seconds."

"No can do," he huffed. "Mom told me to look after you."

"Lie to her. Just go, pick me up later. I'll support it. I have to hurry, Rick."

"Where to?" he frowned.

"You won't understand-"

"Spill."

"I'm following a bird."

He raised an eyebrow. "You're a dumbass. What are you, 5?"

"Rick, please," he pushed the hand off with a tight grip, and stepped aside. "Just wait for me here later. Go on your date."

And he ran.
"Theo-"
He didn't hear it. He just kept running, toes slamming to the ground lightly, his backpack bouncing. The lyrebird swooped east.

Theodore Too ran east.
"Pardon me, sorry," he muttered, as he bumped into a man's shoulder, ran against a little girl that almost cried and accidentally took down an old man. "Sorry!"

He tripped. He grunted, rubbing his sore cheek, glancing at the bird fading from his sight. His shoelaces tangled in a mess.

There was a reason why he preferred the tap shoes to the ballet ones.

He puffed out his cheeks with a gust of air, took them off, and shoved them into to the backpack, no matter how gross it was. He stood up, patted his thigh, sighed at the lump in his pocket, and ran again.

The short legs of the lyrebird folded backwards, the tail leveled down. No one had seen that before.
Because Lyrebirds only fly low.
Except that one.

The bird dove in a tree, past the railing, past the cliffs of Giant Stairway, through the leaves and branches. Out in the wild.

He stopped, and threw his bag on the ground by the sidewalk, pulling out a rope, and slung it across his right shoulder, a knife in his left hand. His fingers twitched, and got to work.

A group of teenagers took a picture together, the tallest boy holding a stick, a phone at the end. They smiled.
He photo bombed it by diving down, off the cliff.

I've trained for this.
Make grandma see how much of a good boy I've been.

He strucked the blade, fell deeper, and held on. His foot rested on one of the walls of the cliff, his hands gripping the knots he made at the middle and end of the rope.

Breeze ran through his hair. A tweet. He looked up. The lyrebird zoomed past him, and forward to the big rock of Three Sisters. He leapt down, his grip tightened, burning as his palms slid down the rope, all the way to reach the ground. He pulled, folding the ropes, the blade clattering down. Theo collected back in his hands, and ran.

The Three Sisters.
The obvious destination, visible from his position.

He ran swiftly, quietly, ears buzzing with the songs of an unusual lyrebird. His feet stepped on something, and it was red. He made nothing of it.

But why here? Why would the charm lead him there?
A bunyip? Like in the legends?
He hoped not.

Bunyips were above his level. Bunyips were savages that had no mercy, and didn't understand life. Theo was a normal human that loved the beauty of life and had too much mercy in his heart and had yet to kill any being.

In his dreams, bunyips killed his grandmother, tore her flesh, licked her bones, her scream echoing and ringing inside his head.

It was just a dream.
But Theo was a dreamer.
Or how did he believe in these things, these legends for so long, all the way until teenagehood and thus becoming a Mai?
Because he was a dreamer. He dreamed and believed and his eyes could see them. His mind could take it.

Killing was a cruel thing he swore to never do.

He reached the bottom, and threw the blade as high as he could, stabbed into a rock. He pulled it, tested it, and climbed up. His foot found a perfect place to put in, and swung the blade intertwined with ropes above him. He kept on, heard a scream from a human being who must've saw him, until he reached the top.

No bunyips so far.
Good.
He took the blade off the rock walls.
Am irregular shape of green luminescence shone upon his pocket. It buzzed, vibrated. The lyrebird swooped down, behind the rocks, and he followed.

The behind only had crumbles of pale rocks, sand between his toes, blood coming from the cut on his heels. A torn brown piece of cloth randomly patched on it.

The lyrebird tweeted, and shifted. Its wings grew larger, legs, stretching longer, beak dissasipating.

Human. Old, with white beard. Bald. Skinny to a fault. Eyes beady and black. Naked.
Theo looked away.

It wasn't a pleasant sight.
He didn't even like staring at girls' exposed skins when they wear shorts or skirts (it's rude), so the old man was something he never wanted see in his entire life.

"Look here, son," came a low, sore croak.

"Uh."

"I've worn a cloth."

Well, thank God.
He turned, scratching the back of his neck. The old man wore the torn brown thing to hide his body like a towel. Their eyes met.

Theodore gulped. "Tyawan?"

"Yes, child. I am Tyawan, and you are spilling blood on my daughter's heels."

"Well, it came from my heel. Can't stop. Won't stop. Heel to heel. Good, right?" he shrugged. "You're the one who made me come here barefoot."

He had to skip one more dancing lesson.

"It wasn't part of my doing that you do not know the proper way to tie shoelaces."

His fingers fidgeted with the ropes he had. The man smiled.
"Come with me."

He did as told as the elderly pulled a rock, revealing a passageway, and climbed in.

Inside was like a tunnel, glowed by colours of light green, with a smell of tea. He didn't know where they came from, but he didn't care. Symbols of the Egyptian eye, which he browsed in the internet, known as the Eye of Horus, carved on the walls with a white glow. His palms brushed over one tenderly, warmly buzzing under his fingertips. His charm buzzed and glowed as well, but in a comforting, gentle way.

"Here."
Past the man, in front of him, was a door made out of beige rocks. On it was a special mark;

Mai.
An aboriginal language. A way to regard him as a Sight.

He gasped.

"They await you, Theodore Too."

"How do you know my full name?"

"Not important for now," he knocked on the door, and pressed his pale palms on his back, pushing him forward. "And next time, wear shoes with straps or zips instead of shoelaces."

Theo didn't care about the last advice. He stepped in.