Knitted Bones

  A crisp-gangrenous portion of the slug-like inner body of a tree parasite, and part of its bark exoskeleton. Who brought these to me, a spearfisher, has a name for it, Hermit Tree Slug.   The meat inside the bark looks slug-like , but if cut it is firmer, as a mollusk , and according to the spearfisher, if well cooked, it is a delicious meal. The exterior is damaged, as if burned, perhaps a necrotic reaction to the creature’s death. A healthier portion of it, protected by the bark, has a gelatinous texture that seems to glue the bark to the parasitic body. The bark has a fragment of a branch , on it, the creature has extended a portion of itself, as a thin tentacle that goes trough it.  Inside the soft flesh of the mollusk are branching tubes, like veins , of brown color, they seem to move some kind of blood or other sort of liquid around.      The spearfisher and a large group of villagers have hunted this creature after an elder of the village was...