The man curses as he digs his hole. There will be no delicious bounty to find in this hole. The salt of his skin is beginning to mingle with that of the sea soaked sand. His arms ache, he is no longer the boy that used to roam the beach, climb the palms and dig the sand for food. Still the sun is setting now and a breeze is beginning to muster, perhaps the dig will not be as hellish as he fears. Already the wet sand is falling fast from his shovel, he is making good headway now.

The turtle will not lay tonight, she can sense the activity on the beach and for her fear she will not swim farther up the beach. Nor will she lay on any other beach, for this is the one she first decended many moons ago, this is her beach as it will be the beach of her children. She swims heavy for another night and day.

The love was true. The couple moved to a new house in the small village, an idle walk away from the beach upon which they met. The boy with the dreamy eyes soon became a man, the girl a mother. A baby girl with emerald eyes would learn to swim down on that beach and two years later she would teach her little brother in the same salt waters. A lonely she turtle would hear their happy howling descend to her watery world. No children for her to nurture were aswim those waters.