Coffee Espionage

London sighed. They had been waiting for what felt like hours, silently watching the other Whiffling, crouched behind discarded boxes. Espionage created such conflicting feelings: boring enough to be mind-numbing, tense enough to require you to be always on your toes. Sneaking into the research institute hadn’t been easy, but now they were being rewarded by watching a nerdy as heck Whiffling go about an entirely normal day.

London had no idea why Moira, their Queen, had sent them here, though that was nothing new. They had only been given instructions to “follow coffee” at the institute to learn information that would be very valuable to her. Moira’s commands were notoriously vague, often only obvious in retrospect - and by that point you had a big angry spider to deal with. London privately assumed that they made it so far up the colony’s ladder due to a knack for interpreting them. They had dutifully risen at the crack of dawn, crept through the sterile halls using their subtle gray-and-white markings as camouflage, until they found her - this Whiffling clearly with a coffee scent focus, puttering away.

The coffee Whiffling’s work was a little mind-numbing, tinkering with valves and drip rates and weighing things very precisely, and London couldn’t interpret it. The drone of the fluorescent lights overhead didn’t help. Their pets, bored, were trying to make their own fun. Their spider, Widow, was amusing itself fixing up old cobwebs in a dusty corner of the room. Their dust bunny, Ashes, who had never shown any magic in particular (but was always handy for squeezing into small spaces) was staring unblinkingly at its friend.

“Jealous, Ashes?” London asked with a quiet laugh, then turned back to their work, irate again. Why had Moira sent them here? Surely not to watch this bizarre office drone Whiffling?

Occasionally, a jovial-looking frog Paralogos would come by with a cart. She was clearly close to the Whiffling, listening to her excitedly recounting the settings used to brew her latest coffee pot. She would load her cart full of clean mugs and the coffee, and then leave to distribute them throughout the institute.

By the third time the Paralogos came around, London was at their wit’s end. They were getting sore, crouched behind the discarded boxes of the new coffee maker, and this wasn’t going anywhere.

Suddenly Ashes bit them, right on the ankle! It took all of London’s composure not to yelp. “What’s gotten into you?” they hissed to their pet. In response, Ashes inclined their head towards the frog Paralogos, who was loading up her cart once more.

Loading it full of... coffee! London facepalmed. Of course! They weren’t meant to follow the coffee Whiffling around - they literally had to follow the coffee. They ground their teeth. In their defense, Moira’s instructions weren’t usually so literal.

“Come on!” They muttered under their breath, scooping up their pets and hiding them under their cobwebbed shawl. They steadied themself, and when the Paralogos passed by with her cart, they jumped on, quickly nestling amongst the different mugs and coffee fixings on the cart. It was helpful that they were small, even for a Whiffling. 

It was time for a ride.

---

An hour or so later, London watched and waited while the Paralogos, whose name was Morgan, went seemingly everywhere in the institute. They saw the view from the sixth floor - at least a snippet of it from deep within the mugs - and they had been to the basement, where they encountered an annoying mousey Paralogos and a chatty, squishy-looking one. They were beginning to lose faith in their mission again, as the only thing they had learned was the latest gossip about who ate who’s lunch (stored in the sample fridge).

Gradually, however, they realized that the rattling on the top shelf of the cart was lessening as mugs were used up and the amount of coffee in the pot dwindled. They peered up carefully when Morgan’s back was turned. She was down to her last cup.

London scrunched back down in the corner of the cart. Morgan was taking them somewhere in the elevator, lower than the basement and the sub-basement. Finally, the doors opened with a “ding” to an empty hallway. The frog Paralogos pushed the cart to a door that London couldn’t distinguish from the others, and fixed up the last cup of coffee. She seemed nervous, her webbed hands shaking slightly. She set it in front of the door, and London could just make out a foam heart on the surface of the mug.

The frog Paralogos hurried back to the elevator, London rattling uncomfortably as everything clattered around. They launched themself out of the cart at the last second as the elevator doors closed. The sensors tripped, and the doors slid back open with a ding. Pressed against the wall on the outside of the elevator, London’s heart beat like their rabbit influence in their chest.

Don’t investigate, don’t investigate, don’t investigate... London thought, but as fate would have it, the Paralogos only mashed the “door close” button, from the sound of it. She must really want to get out in a hurry, London realized, not sure what that meant for them and their pets, but that it was nothing good.

After the elevator doors had closed and the lift rumbled out of earshot, London took a look around. They were in a sterile hallway. It looked utterly unused; there were no old boxes or other debris on the floor; the whiteboards adjacent to the closed doorways were wiped clean of dry eraser, and any labels to mark what door was what were absent. High above, the fluorescent lights stuttered, as if they hadn’t been replaced in a long time. Only the coffee cup sat in front of the one indistinguishable doorway, steaming gently.

They walked up and pressed their long ear to the doorway. A muffled rustle came from within, getting closer. They jerked back. It suddenly occurred to them they had nowhere to hide.

Frick! Uncharacteristically bad language for the composed Whiffling. The hallway was empty, the elevator buttons only made to accommodate humans and Paralogos. They hopped from one paw to another.

Ashes leapt from its perch on their shoulder. Widow, their spider, hopped down after it. Ashes was running in quick circles, as if trying to catch London’s attention.

“Okay, I’m watching,” they said quietly, trying to slow their breathing. “What is it?”

Ashes made a beeline down the hallway, and London followed with soft, quick steps, Widow bringing up the rear. What could it be doing? The little dust bunny had never shown any magical aptitude, but if there was ever the time to develop some, it would be now.

Ashes stopped at a part of the hallway, hopping back and forth in front of one nondescript spot in front of the wall. London hurried up to them. “Ashes, wha - oh!” They spotted it - a tiny cobweb, a sad collection of forlorn strands waving to an unknown breeze near the floor, long since abandoned by its owner. “Yes, yes!” London hissed quietly. “Ashes! You found your magic! I’m so prou - well, we’ll talk about this later. Widow! Your turn!”

The little spider crept up to the cobweb. They couldn’t create them - that was the realm of the Paralogos - but they were adept at fixing what was already there. Widow set to work, reinforcing the sad strands into a respectable tangle of dusty cobweb. London grabbed both of their pets, cradling them close to their chest, and hunkered down behind the reinforced cobweb, blending in with their splotchy gray markings and cobwebbed “shawl.” To an outside observer, they hoped, it would just appear as if a spider had set up residence in a forgotten corner.

It couldn’t have come sooner. Just as they were settled and peering out from among the strands, the door the mug was in front of creaked open. A multitude of glowing green eyes was visible in the darkness within, and London stifled a gasp. A Paralogos emerged from the shadows unlike any they had seen before: it had hundreds of eyes, roving across the hallway in all directions, and they shrank back further into their web. The hallway filled with the sound of rustling parchment as it dragged two giant wings crammed full of papers with indiscernible writing across the tile floor. The Paralogos, which was certainly Wicked, peered suspiciously down the hallway, and for a moment seemed to make eye contact with London. They froze as the creature squinted curiously at the cobweb, then shrugged, grabbing the mug of coffee in golden-clawed paws that made it look like a thimble. 

Just as quickly as they appeared, the Paralogos turned, retreating back into the darkness. The door shut behind them with a click, and the hallway was eerie and silent once again.

When London made it back to the colony, they would have quite the story to tell.