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_ Doomsayer _

A slow, low rumbling started from beyond rolling green hills.

Steady. Constant.

A coastal town sat in those foothills, steeped in the morning sun.

One by one, its residents, curious over those drum-like beats, stepped out of their homes and began to fill the narrow streets.

Those beats grew louder, stronger.

But still, they remained distant.

Tirrell stirred in his bed, rubbing eyes that winced from the light that seeped through the blinds.

Those rumblings caught the wolf's black-tipped ears. Started them perking.

And started him leisurely pulling the bedcovers from off himself.

Subtle vibrations travelled beneath his paws once he set them on the bedroom carpet, moving in tandem with each of those guttural groans from beyond green hills.

His backpack sat waiting in the corner, next to a desk chair that shuddered on its wheels ever so.

Draped over that desk chair were a shirt and some shorts; the wolf's first port of call as the mumbling of panic began outside his windows.

"We have been found!" a man bellowed, voice deep and hearty. "The end is upon us."

Panicked mumbles grew to a rumble, drowned out only by that which rolled on and on in its steady, constant, loudening rhythm.

The doomsayer outside Tirrell's apartment continued, shouting at all who might listen of the fate set to befall them.

But the wolf meanwhile merely continued in his room, throwing on that shirt, and slipping on those shorts.

"None can hide, none can flee," the man roared in passionate pessimism. "There is no chance, no salvation..."

Tirrell stretched the ache from out his back, tail flicking as he reached down for his backpack.

The thumping under foot grew stronger. Enough now to start the cutlery clattering in the dinner bowl left on his shuddering bedside table.

The wolf left it to continue, taking a steady trot over to the blinded balcony doors, his ears and tail still flicking to the loudening thuds outside.

From out on his top floor balcony, Tirrell could better hear the world.

The anxious voices, the scurrying footsteps, and the still-thundering booms that overtook them all every few seconds.

The wolf could see his neighbours in the cobbled streets three floors down, rushing in any and all directions.

That doomsayer was there, too, chest out and standing tall outside the cornershop across the way. In his bassy voice, the bear kept up his bellow about the frightening fate befalling them all.

Tirrell tuned out their roars, ears flicking hard to a far bassier thoom that seemed to roll through air and ground alike. He took his phone out from his pocket, a casual lean on the balcony railing while he checked the time.

Not long after nine.

"You!" the doomsayer hollered. A broad arm and jabbed finger pointed upwards. "Take heed, only doom awaits us!"

The slow, town-encompassing rumble repeated once more, accompanied that time by a far stiffer tremor.

Tirrell peered down over the railing, its metalwork rattling within his gripped paw, watching the thinning crowds flee far faster across the cobbles.

That bear met his gaze.

The wolf looked back at his phone.

Shadow overtook everything.

"It is _you_that beckons the apocalypse," the doomsayer cried, voice breaking as that shadow darkened and another tremor shook the street. "Curse you... Curse you to the depths of h-"

"Mate," Tirrell snapped back. "'ow 'bout you shut the fuck up and just do one, yeah?" He glared down at the frowning bear with a fiercely-creasing snout. "Doing my absolute nut chattin' all that bollocks..."

The town fell dark at the height of morning.

Buildings tall and small trembled, church bells chimed a chaotic chorus, and towering trees danced and swayed as yet another thudding rumble rocked the world.

In the street, that doomsayer started to stagger, sidestepping someone's moped scooter that'd shaken from its space settled against a wall.

He glared up to the wolf on a balcony, readying to roar before the next thunderous beat...

A beat... that never came.

That trembling... had stopped.

The booming, too.

Darkness remained, but with a stillness now joining it.

A gust, warm and humid, rushed down onto the apartment building, finding pathways through the maze-like cobbled streets around it.

The wolf on the balcony stood watch.

And watched as something started to descend.

Something huge.

Grey.

Further overshadowing the streets.

...An arm.

...A paw.

"Good morning, little lupine," a big, bold voice said from the heavens, carrying a rumbling yet gentle tone. "Sorry I'm late. Are you all set to head on out?"

"Mornin', hugewolf," Tirrell sang, craning his neck up high towards his giant, golden-eyed, fellow grey wolf. "And yeah, I'm all set."

Hank grinned, negotiating a paw big enough to grab the apartment building down towards its top balcony.

With finger and thumb pressed to the whole of his little friend's belly and back, he expertly plucked Tirrell up over the railing and into his grasp. A manoeuvre that drew a loud, contented grumble in reply.

Soon, Hank had settled the finger-tall wolf and his backpack down into his wide palm, beaming an eye-creasing smile down for him as he asked, "Is that there bag enough for a two week visit?"

"'s plenty," Tirrell replied, tail sweeping and swaying at the excitement of that trip to come. "Though according to some bloke down there, you're the 'apocalypse', so... might not even need_this_much, hah."

"Apocalypse, hmm?" Hank shone a sky-filling smirk, still raising his open paw towards it. "I did try to be gentle with my steps on the way over here."

"Hey, I know you did." The tiny wolf bumped his far bigger friend on the nose once close enough. "Ain't nothing crumbled or anything down there. Bloody drama queens."

Hank nosed back, pressing Tirrell down until he'd left him sprawled on his palm pad, blonde-dyed headfur a shambled mess. "Shall we make tracks?"

"Heh, yeah." The flattened little wolf patted the side of his pressing snout. "Let's go."

And with that, the two wolves headed off together, rattling and rumbling that little town on the coast, right up until they'd disappeared beyond the rolling green hills.

"Funny looking apocalypse, that," chided a voice from behind the door of the cornershop.

"Fuck's sake, Harry," another shouted from a window of the apartment below Tirrell's. "My breakfast'll be all cold and 'orrible now... Cheers."

"I really reckoned this was the one," Harry, the doomsayer, muttered, his voice less bass, more shrill, standing as small as a bear could on that cobblestone street corner. "...Didn't _you_reckon this was the one? ...Lads?"

"...Hey, lads?"