The tiny sea turtle paddled out to sea for the first time, the only one of her hundred siblings to survive. For days, she swam frantically until she escaped the strong current and found her way to calmer water.

For the next fifty years, she played, lived, and grew in the sea. She learned where the best tasting sea grass grew and how to catch the delicious jelly fish she loved to eat. They tasted so good, and she couldn't figure out why no other animals seemed to want to eat them. She found a nice hollow place in a coral reef where she rested every day.

She learned to recognize the other creatures of the sea and occasionally encountered the strange two legged land creatures who weren't very good at swimming. Most of them just watched her, some tried to feed her, and one of them grabbed her and tried to ride on her back. She hoped she wouldn't meet that one again.

After many years, it was finally time for her to return to the beach where she was born. She crawled up out of the sea and looked around. The beach looked much different than the night when she first paddled out to sea so long ago. There were more strange lights and noises and the two legged creatures' garbage covered the beach. She almost turned and swam back to sea, but then she remembered why she was there. She crawled up the beach, where she dug a hole and laid her eggs, one by one. She carefully covered the hole and swam back out to her resting place in the coral reef.
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The tiny sea turtle paddled out to sea for the first time, the only one of her hundred siblings to survive. Far below, from a hollow place in a coral reef, an old sea turtle watched.

Arakun
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