From the Travel Diary and Sketchbook of Braxton Montague Shew III (Bang-tailed Petalmouth)

Dear Mater,

I hope this letter finds you and the Pater well. We have made planetfall on New Adelaide around Great Kelly’s Star, a dreary, provincial place with very little to interest one. The local architecture is hideous, being mostly plasma-molded rock so that the buildings resemble nothing more than congealed oatmeal. And the “art,” if one may call it by so exalted a term, consists of variously-stained, oily pastes applied to stretched sheets of canvas. Nevertheless, to pass the time before departure, Umberto, M’bwurto and I contracted with a “bushmaster,” a colonial guide, to take us for a turn through the wild country south of the spaceport. While his hopper-skimmer seemed rather old, and appeared to have been constructed of odd bits and pieces of several models, it did serve its rugged purpose admirably. We managed a close-up look at the local behemoth, called a Bang-tailed Petalmouth, which I have rendered in the enclosed sketch. Bert, our bushmaster, informed us that the “petals” are precise sensors for light, sound and odor, and also serve as fingers to uproot grasses and other plants and stuff them down its maw. Because the beast orients itself to the sunlight as it moves along, it tends to graze in circular arcs. This is what gives the grasslands their distinctive moire pattern when viewed from space. It has also made the local predators quite the little geometers.

With fondest regards,

your son, Brax