Mischief walked to her seat, thinking that it was a miracle she had even
made her flight.  The fact that she was early was even more impossible.
She sank down into the hammie, things were just getting too weird.  First
a freaky black ferret in a coffee shop, then the email message, the
closed ski resort (weird) and now this.  How had she managed to get to
her flight early when she had left late?  The security check had seemed
to take no time at all.  She put it to the back of her mind, and tried to
relax and enjoy the flight.  Of course she failed miserably, she had
never liked airplane rides that much.  Other ferrets would like looking
out the windows at the tiny glimpses of the arctic ice between the
clouds.  But mischief hated it.  And she fell asleep.
 
Even in her sleep, she had no peace, dreams of the civil war kept waking
her up, (it was even hard to sleep through cannon fire in your sleep!)
and a faceless ferret always walking towards her.  She was annoyed that
she kept waking up, but other than that, having the same strange
nightmare over and over didn't really bother her.  But she was relieved
when she got off the plane in London.
 
She looked around, London looked pretty much like any big town.  Some
city ferrets thought it was pretty special, but it looked like any boring
city to her.  But she was a country ferret.
 
As quickly as she could, she got on the bus to bandit boulevard and sat
down.  She looked around, the bus was pretty nice.  At least, the seats
were nice fleece, but the rest of the bus wasn't too fancy.  She got off
at her stop, and walked down the road, looking at the addresses.  She
found number 800 and looked curiously at the front of the building.  She
wasn't sure what she had expected, but this was not it.  The building
looked shabby and run down.  There was pigeon poo on the windows, which
looked like they hadn't been washed in months and there were shingles
falling off the roof.  Disappointed, mischief checked the address again,
this was definitely the headquarters of the SAS.  But she was still
unsure about what to do.  A falling shingle made up her mind for her, she
dashed through the door to avoid getting hit.  Mischief gasped and looked
around in surprise.  She was in a huge room with soft fleece carpet,
sunlight was streaming in through the windows and reflecting off of walls
painted a beautiful soft blue.  Here and there, there were ferrets
hurrying about their business, but the place seemed very peaceful and
welcoming.  A small wiry black ferret at the front desk walked up to her.
"sorry about the shingles." She said, smiling somewhat evilly, but that
could have just been Mischief's imagination "they fall if you stand there
too long , but they're supposed to scare unwelcome ferrets away.  Why'd
you come in?" she asked in a rush "I'm baby, by the way.  And I know
that's a horrible name for any ferret to have, so don't comment.
 
"hi" mischief said "I'm Mischief, and I think I'm supposed to be here, I
got a letter..."
 
"oh!" Baby interrupted before mischief could finish "well, come on up,
and I'll get you set up in your room, you're lucky by the way.  Mischief
is a much better name for a ferret than baby!  I really don't know what
my parents were thinking when they named me, but they regretted it
later."
 
Mischief saw that evil gleam in baby's eye again, and decided that she
was going to be a ferret to watch.  Baby led mischief through a narrow,
tunnel-like corridor, which led to a confusing maze of even narrower
stairs.  They walked up seven floors, to a wider, brightly lit hallway
with the same fleece carpeting as the lobby.  Baby opened one of the
doors (number 80) and they walked in.  Mischief gasped.  The room was
bigger than her whole house, and although her house was pretty dang
small, that was still amazing.  It had two windows, and of course, the
awesome soft fleece carpet that most of the building had.  The walls were
painted a light turquoise with red trim and four squishy chairs sat by a
large fireplace.  Two sections of the room were curtained off, in one of
them were four of the softest, coziest hammies Mischief had ever seen,
and I'll bet you can guess what the other one was.  I'm not going to go
into details about the litterbox.  "your ski gear and other junk will be
brought up later, ok" baby said, startling mischief "see you around."
[Posted in FML issue 4990]