Spyin Not Chanj: Is Still Waytin

Mom Says:

After the incident at the prison (and in the palm tree), Agent Octavian was shaken. It’s not easy when you know you are descended from gods (in this case, Egyptian ones) to suddenly face the idea of your own lack of invincibility. And that’s before even taking into account of the more physical trauma of mild heat stroke and accompanying hallucinations.

For five days, Ibrahim harbored Octavian (who was incredibly tense, and who started to take it out on Ibrahim’s favorite armchair until he realized what he was doing and stopped and slunk off to a corner for a whole day). Ibrahim and his wife Zaina, however, had fortunately seen agents in this situation before. Zaina sat him in her lap and stroked his shiny black fur for as long as he would allow, sometimes even for minutes at a time. Ibrahim pulled out a small white metal box with a red crescent on the top, sorted through bandages and small packets of pills, to pull out a very tired-looking stuffed monkey, with which he enticed Octavian to play, pounce!, and generally claw the crap out of something other than his chair.

This two-pronged therapeutic program (known in professional espionage circles as TPTP) proved relatively effective. By the end of the week, when a courier from London finally came with Octavian’s new orders, Octavian could sit still or nap for almost an hour at a time before leaping! up and running around the tiny apartment like a crazy kittee.

And it didn’t hurt that—Well, let’s be honest. It helped quite a lot, actually, that the courier M had sent him was his old friend, Alek.

Musashi Sez:

Wen Ibrahim tol me that we wuz goin to hav a cooreeyur from M as a dinnr gest, I wuzn’t too happee. Moslee fansee-pantz dinnr gest typs egspeks yu to sit still fer a long tim at the taybul, an I still wuzn’t ther yet. But wen he opnz the dor, ther stud mai ol frend Alek, whu had pertendid to be mai sekretaree an shofer wen we wuz on mai firsts misshun in Licktenshyn.

I leapt! up an Alek cogt me, laugfin. He sed, “Eight! Well done! You survived an assault by Spyetsnaz! Not every agent can manage such swift and agile self-extraction, you know. Your currency at HQ has quite gone up.”

An altho I doesn’t see how I suddinlee gots mai own kinda monee jus cuz I kin run up treez reellee fast—I gotta say, this do mayk me feel kinda betterer…