This might become part of a series of descriptions of imaginary life forms. Or it might not.
o Getting a Grip
Drifting in their white pillowy prisons, tiny bacteria cling to crystals of ice. Pieces of frozen water blown by the wind; single cells clustered on the hard surface. Yet due to some freak of fate some of these aerial travellers develop a tighter grip on their slippery ships. Those with stronger holds start to bind separate crystals together. Superclusters of ice form around bacterial nuclei, gaining weight and substance.
o Terrible Gravity
Spiralling clumping masses of ice and cells start to fall from the sky. Dragged from a life amongst the clouds back to earth. Although too light to die, only the more cautious of builders remain aloft. Thin, delicate threads and lightweight rods proliferate where the simple agglutinators fail. Many of these fragile columns shatter on contacting each other - cloud knights jousting on the blue field of the sky.
o Weaving Cities
It becomes advantageous for the cells to build, even to design in their limited fashion. Webs, like that of a parasitic fungus, stetch through the bodies of clouds. Rounded rather than flat; tunnels and tubes all woven from the simple thread of bacteria and crystal. Planes and sheets are not far behind, grown in the isolation of a cloud belly. Convoluted insides form to fill the cavernous spaces between threads and columns. The sunlight sparkles from magnificent turrets and shiny plates, admiring and destroying in the same look.
o Water, water
Two terrible forces threaten the new cloud cities: the sun and simple starvation. Their very bulk starts to be their undoing as the melting, destructive light warps and ruins these fairy castles. Ruined zeppelins crash together, with catastrophic results. Hybrid wrecks limp through the air; monstrous fusions of proud behemoths. Meltwater runs down struts, freezing into nightmare prisons for the bacteria. The endless variants of thread and rod, net and shell are brutally decimated by the flow.
o Fish or Fowl
Too large to subsist on the meagre bounty provided by the wind, the cloud communities are starting to starve. Although at the mercy of the currents they are not without abilities. The architectural skills of a more inventive, whimsical age come into their own. Sculpted, moulded shapes spring from the rambling structures of the past. Funnels and filters emerge to farm the breezes; where cities once drifted, whales now swim. Rival theories even embrace a former enemy - and spin sails to reap the solar streams.
o Red in tooth...
Exuded pigments flow between the sheets and down the centers of threads. Hollow rods selected by a watery knife pipe away the hot fluids. Colour spreads like a gentle blush through the creatures. Transport routes are established and broken, source and sink. Food hoovered into icy bellies is processed and spread through the new plumbing. Heat is also distributed quickly and evenly, allowing more refined structures. Smaller creatures are sometimes swallowed whole by the largest, whale-clouds. Absorbed and even digested...
the hunt begins.