It Holds Her in the Palm of One Hand
Novelette 13,174 words Recommended by 1 award/anthology source
"On Miphre, a planet hardly larger than a moon, jagged mountaintops stab above the cloud cover and harbor small ecosystems in the palms of their hands: rock eels and ribbon mosses and seabirds with rodents clutched to their breasts, each one nestled between those stony fingers."
Content warnings 3
animal-harmbody-horrordeath
Quasar links out; the story lives on Lightspeed, where the author gets the click.