It swam like an airborne jellyfish. A cluster of silver threads it seemed, tangled in a cloud of filaments–or a giant mass of dandelion fluff. It leaked out misty pseudopods, then drew them back as it pulled itself through the air. Weightless as chicken down, huge as a barn, it flew–and drifted from the direction of the sphere in a semi-circle, as if inspecting the land, at times moving against the wind.

It was coming closer to the house.

It moved with purpose, and therefore was alive. This Lucey knew. It moved with its millions of spun threads, finer than a spider’s web, the patterns as ordered as a neural array.

– Walter M. Miller, Jr., “You Triflin’ Skunk”