Oil painting Barley Bean Beings by Phil Cummings

Barley Bean Beings

The soup was boiling with sentient mushrooms and non-Euclidean oval pieces of barley that were alien seed pods about to burst and emit ravenous space larvae. The steam that rose from the mushroom-barley Venusian surface formed the faces of mystic philosophers yearning to impart the truth before they dissolved into the ether. The spoon was about to melt.