It's that time of year again... Macro March! Following last week,s example here comes another silly and sizable story! Here's hoping you enjoy it and that I'm able to knock out a few more of these big vignettes, bignettes, in the couple weeks remaining.

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Macro March: Coming To You Live

By: RaddaRaem

“Of course I’m worried,” Cass sighed. Fingers curled tightly around his microphone, the sharply dressed leopard patted at his chest with his free hand.

“Then why didn’t you send Donna out here? I mean, she is our resident weatherman. Err… weatherwoman.”

Cass fumbled with his tie in a desperate attempt to keep his hands occupied while his mind buzzed. “It’s… complicated.”

“Complicated how?” The whistling of the wind and rumbling thunder drowned out the camerawoman’s question. Clearing her throat, Valerie raised her voice and tried again. “Complicated how?!”

Tail tucked between his legs, he heaved out a heavy and long-held breath. “Complicated like… I don’t know. Like, I get that covering the weather is Donna’s territory. But at the same time, I’m the lead anchor! I get first say in what stories I want to cover and I did use to cover that myself way back when. A-and covering a storm, live and in person, is dangerous enough as it is. A Macro March storm though?! No one’s been crazy enough to try that! I’m not about to just force Donna to do so. Yet… I can’t deny the thought of being the first news anchor to cover a Macro March storm live and in person is an appealing one.”

Roiling clouds, transitioning between shades of purple and black, whorled and dipped dangerously low. All was dark across the rural and desolate stretch of gravel road. Save for the glare of a news van’s headlights illuminating the leopard and Golden Labrador standing before it.

Grunting, Valerie planted the legs of her camera’s tripod in the shifting and unstable rocks.

Arcs of lightning, stretching out like veins through the briefly illuminated sky, crackled ominously. Intermittent drops of rain, intermixed with tiny pellets of hail, noisily slapped against the parked van quietly idling.

The leopard’s now sopping wet suit clung heavily to his broad back and shoulders. “I saw the opportunity and I took it,” he reluctantly acknowledged.

Valerie snorted. “So you’re a bundled mess of ambition and guilt with a sense of self-preservation buried somewhere deep beneath it all. Got it.”

“H-hey!” Cass ran a hand through the fur atop his head as the rain picked up.

“Just saying,” his camerawoman casually replied. “I mean, let’s be honest. Where else can you move on up from here?”

Furrowing his brows, Cass chewed over his answer. “I guess we’ll find out,” he finally replied as Valerie gestured out his countdown. Rolling his shoulders, the feline news anchor straightened his posture, donned a gentle smile, and peered into the camera.

“Good evening, ladies and gentlemen! Reporting live, this is Cass Vernnet, with my ever faithful camerawoman Valerie Stoan. Tonight’s exclusive story: Macro March. That mysterious and utterly inexplicable surge of storms, peculiar to the month of March, that have terrorized people nationwide for two years running now. We’re here live, in the eye of a Macro March storm, to give you fine folks at home a closer look than ever before at what to expect and what to look out for! Rain, thunder, lightning, hail… at a glance these storms seem no different than your typical spring or summer showers. However, should you keep your eye on the sky…” Cass pointed up and Valerie obliged as the wind roared and sheets of rain pounded against them both.

“You’ll notice the peculiar purple coloration of the clouds!” Cass continued. “Everyone knows that green skies hail the ominous oncoming of, well, hail. These newfound purple skies, in turn, portend unexplained and incomprehensible growth!”

Valerie audibly gasped as Cass slowly crept into the frame. “C-cass! You’re-”

Cass chuckled nervously as he struggled mightily to maintain his calm and composed persona. “A-as you can see, the effects of this storm front are utterly random and without rhyme or reason! Here I am, microphone in hand, swelling uncontrollably, as Valerie down there, who was standing all of a few feet in front of me, is entirely unaffected!” The leopard gingerly stepped backwards as his thickening feet encroached upon the canine. His footfalls came to rival the thunder. Van sized toes splayed apart, Cass swallowed hard and struggled to focus on, in his eyes, his dwindling coworker. “My clothing, my microphone, all of it inexplicably grows with me! While, strangely enough, others have not always been so fortunate. Whereas some people grow in sudden and pronounced bursts while, uhh, while yours truly is steadily growing. A-and shows no signs of stopping.”

Eye level with the padded undersides of his fuzzy toes, Valerie tilted her camera further and further back as her colossal coworker continued to spill out of frame. Even as he continued to distance himself from her, even as he continued to tread backwards, even as progressively larger paw shaped craters came to pock the lonely gravel road… she still wasn’t able to fit all of him in the shot.

“Unfortunately, g-given the inclement weather I fear we’ll have to cut this exclusive report short!” Cass’ voice cratered in octave as he swelled. His spoken word sent out just as forceful of shockwaves as did his footfalls and the Labrador struggled to remain standing while his ocean-trench rivaling tones rattled her to her bones. Even when tilted up at practically a ninety degree angle, all the canine could see were the leopard’s plump and swollen toes. Shyly curled against his soles.

Biting into his lips, the leopard’s ears tucked against his skull, swishing through turbulent clouds as they did so, while he lowered his voice as much as he was able. “S-signing off! This has been Cass Vernnet. The uhh… biggest name in news?”