The cool night air tickled at my skin. The strong metallic smell of blood and guts contaminated the chilly breeze. All around us there was bare grey land and thick tufts of tussock. The huge full moon illuminated the inky black sky.

The small black pig Dad had just shot sounded quite alive as it squealed and screamed, as if it didn’t have half its guts outside its body on the damp ground.

“We should stab it with those sticks,” I suggest.

“No, we’ve got to drown him – plus we can’t kill it with blunt sticks,” Dad practically screamed.

I cringed as the piercing screams of the half-dead pig rang in my ears.

After what felt like a lifetime, we reached the creek. My dad firmly gripped the tinsy pig’s legs and dunked him in the murky water. The piggy kicked and bubbles rose up from deep within the creek, and then… he stopped. Dad released the lifeless corpse from his crushing grasp and let it float away on its final journey.

It may have floated out to the middle of the ocean, it may have become food for an innocent baby whale, it may have sunk down to the unknown void of the deep dark sea, no one knows. But that pig is now part of something much, much, much bigger than itself.