Text: A Devouring Beast

Imagine being adrift on an enormous ocean and coming across a sphere of life encrusted flotsam, you lower the boom net and haul the unique find out of the water.
The oysters and mussels are fresh and tasty; the little crustaceans scampering about on the surface are not really edible but seem to rely on the resources you are now snacking on. Pockets of fresh sweet water will quench thirst until depleted or spoiled and on further examination, veins of gold can be prised out with a knife. Before you are finished looking for gold, the black stuff that came away while you were fossicking, dries out enough to become fuel for your barbeque and shinny trinkets accumulate for your amusement.

You now become fanatical about mining it and start systematically gouging at it from all directions. Its black bodily fluids spill out; making a mess of everything till you realize you can burn it to run a generator that will help you finish off your mining exploits. Gas begins to escape from the body and you trap it to run lighting for your twenty four hour a day obsession.

Eventually, you realize its resources are limited and that the hot red blooded liquid spewing out of it, coagulating around your feet, is symbolizing the death of the possibly one off find. So to avoid any further messy work you throw the stinking corpse back in the ocean and it sinks to the bottom. You stow the booty, set the sails and wander off to try and find another one.