Growth — Painful and Transcendent

Photo by Ricardo Braham on Unsplash

In Gail Godwin’s Grief Cottage, orphaned Marcus lives on a South Carolina island. He finds guidance and provides it, encouraging a clutch of turtle embryos:

“…I spoke to [them] about their present secure state…and about their future great voyage. (‘…don’t worry, your ancestors have been doing it for over a hundred million years. You’ll just get out of your egg… It will only be about a twenty-inch climb…