Gwyn was the smallest turtle in the willow marsh, small enough to hide beneath one curled lily pad and green enough that dragonflies sometimes mistook her shell for moss.

Across that shell ran pale winding lines: one curved like a reed path, one forked like a brook, and one ended in a tiny spiral that looked, to Gwyn, exactly like a wave.

Every evening she listened to old frogs tell of the sea, where distant turtle cousins named Caoimhe and Danila swam through water too wide to see across.

Gwyn wanted to visit them and tell them how the marsh smelled after rain.

The older turtles warned that the world between marsh and sea was full of wrong mud, dry banks, fast water, wheels, wings, and wind. Still, when sunrise lit the shell-lines gold, Gwyn whispered, "Then I will read my way carefully."