Feeding Time

"Across the land, as far as eyes can see, there were people ... or people-like things.
They were buried up to their necks and moaning, making sad and terrible sounds with their mouths.
This went on for a long time between feeding times, where they would open their maws upwards so that the morsels of food dropped from above would come into them.
I pitied them.

The gardener told me that I should not and I laughed it off awkwardly.

One would not want to upset the gardener lest one would join his flock in the soil, I thought."