Contrition

All is forgiven, kinda.

I caught up with Jesus just as he was leaving his first therapy session with Mara.

Since this particular report on the moment is supposed to be some kind of confessional, I might as well start out by confessing that when I'm a dog, I'm a dog. No matter how much wisdom and how many lifetimes you stuff into my tiny little recurring body, I'm always going to behave like a dog in the end because that's my nature. In fact, that's why I have this job in the first place.

So when I caught Jesus coming out of the rather modest little house that Mara did her therapeutic work in, I went absolutely berserk with Dog Joy, which is a special kind of joy, one of the Dog super powers. Because I, Flaubert, have lived many lifetimes and concentrated an enormous amount of this power in my tiny body and soul, I have more dog joy than any hundred other dogs my size. It is an irresistible force, and I decided to employ it upfront as a defensive measure.

I ran up to Jesus and started dancing around him like I had lost my mind, which is already small to begin with. When I do lose it, it can be very hard to find again; I often have to use one of my other superpowers, smell, to find it. Lost minds, for those of you who don’t know, smell a bit like stale chewing gum.

I jumped on him. I barked, I rolled around in the dirt. I ran around his feet and bit them.