Colourful stylised turtle design

The storm came in off Tarrow Point on the night the lighthouse keeper took his fever. The waves came over the breakwater like they had somewhere to be. The turtle, Gorlin, was a big old thing, older than the harbour wall, and her shell had grown on her slow and whole, the way a good coat grows on a good dog. That night the sea knocked it clean off her back and carried it away over the shingle.

She didn't go weeping after it. She went looking for colour, because a shell is only ever a bit of colour holding a body together. She found a green bottle-glass lip by the slipway and carried it under her chin. She found a red buoy cap that had been sulking in the weed and pressed it against her belly. A broken lantern lens, yellow as butter, went in the middle, and a bruise-purple mussel lining made a fine pair of flippers. The last piece was a scrap of sail the colour of a clear afternoon, which she wrapped round her back like a shawl.

When the fishing boats came home through the grey morning, they saw a turtle crossing the bay, bright as a fistful of boiled sweets, and nobody had the heart to tell her she wasn't whole anymore. She swam straight past them to the rocks where the lamp was lit again, and she sat there till the keeper got up from his bed. That's the whole of it. Now off you go, the tide's turning and so is your mother's temper.