Thrice per week we’d meet up, never the same place twice. Ostensibly this was to make us harder to track, but really it was just more fun that way. It was our fourth meeting in the second week of our seventh month when...
...something appeared in the shadows further down the alley.
At first I thought it was a stray cat. I moved my head to catch sight of its eyes, but nothing stared back. I shook my head. Must have been a trick of the dim light.
But as I turned back to the others, I caught sight of it again. The dark silhouette was just visible in the corner of my eye. I watched it for a moment, wondering if it was just a curious creature or something more dangerous.
Then a voice spoke.
"You should not have come," it said in a low, deep tone.
I froze hoping it was just one of the others was playing a prank. Yes, that was what it must have been. Just a joke. Then why did I have chills running up my back. And why was the wind beginning to whip around me.
"But since you have, little ones, I urge you that It is time we faced the facts, the humans will not be returning!" it bellowed solemnly from the darkness.
Nervously sniffing the air, before scuttling up an old discarded pizza box, Olaf squinted his little beady eyes at the darkness. "Says you! I spotted some over near the gates, you dramatic dark dork!"
Slowly, and purposefully, the great Nibbles gracefully stepped out of the shadows.
"That's Great Nibbles," they said, breaking the fourth wall and answering an entirely different prompt, possibly from a different hashtag entirely. "With a capital 'G.' It's a title, after all."
Olaf threw his arms in the air. "Nobody would have noticed, you idiot, if you hadn't brought it up. Now you've gone and scattered the dramatic tension like so much confetti."
"It's called method acting, you dingus," the "Great" Nibbles, or as we knew them, Cly muttered. "Now what?" I asked, kind of bummed because I knew what Olaf was going to say.
When one makes a great mistake one starts over.
Thrice a week we met, never in the same place twice...,