The beastling is a black-scaled creature. He crawls into the empty forest, with a tummy ache from the vagrants of the train he ate. He wishes he was back in the city, where the people tasted better, though even in the city, he felt like his life was meaningless, after which he took a train to get out into the country. Now, he feels like he doesn’t belong anywhere. Nearby, he spots a child alone and eats the child right away. By night, he sees a village past some trees in the forest and smells the humans there. It reminds him of the opera house he used to hide behind as he fed on the city’s inhabitants. For now, he slumbers in the forest for the night.

In the morning, the beastling hears music from the village. He sits in a patch of flowers and sees a man coming up to the bloodied place where the child was eaten. Right away, the beastling follows the man, but he simply continues his way back to the village nonchalantly. Fearing that he has been caught, the beastling waits but notices that no one seems to care about the child having been eaten, nor the beastling’s being there. Sneaking up on the village, the beastling overhears that the villagers are talking about the child and how the creature out in the forest isn’t merciful. Briefly, they talk about offering themselves to the thing out there. It makes the beastling feel prideful, and he sleeps through the night well.

Waking up, the beastling seeks to confirm that the villagers worship him, so he attacks a woman and leaves her body beside a fountain. Everyone gathers around her body and wonders what the thing out there wants. They believe that the entire woman wasn’t eaten because she wasn’t delicious, so they fill her with onions and burn her body as an offering. By night, a man, alone, heads out to the burning woman and pokes her with a shovel. The beastling, nearby, tries to pounce on the man and bites his hand, but he retaliates with his shovel and runs away. Later, the man apologizes for running away and denying the thing out there an offering. Everyone in the village laments that they are now cursed, all the while the beastling is listening. Eventually, however, the beastling realizes that the thing out there isn’t referring to himself but another creature, that the beastling was nothing more than a lizard paling in comparison to it.

The villagers leave the village, and the beastling wonders who the other thing must be. Everyone gathers around a dirt circle in a clearing and performs a ritual honoring the thing out there. The man, with the shovel, offers himself as a tribute and apologizes for what he has done. Soon enough, everyone screams as black whips emerge from the forest and grab the man. Soon enough, black whips grab the beastling too. He tries to fight it as he hangs onto the trees, until he falls down to the ground, where all the villagers are already dead.

When he comes to, the beastling remarks on his wounded state. He eats nearby crows and cries on behalf of all the villagers who have died. He now feels inspired to tell the story of the thing out there and the villagers it has consumed. For now, however, he feasts on the birds.