Toby the Turtle
Toby spent his days swimming, he woke up and swam, he went to work and swam, he flippered his way through life, just bobbing along and floating happily. He found it a great way to travel in the deep blue, riding the currents that sped in and bent this way and that way, up and down, round and round. Toby really enjoyed being whisked away and around as he made his way through life. Toby never really and truly felt alone when he swam, for he always swam with his friends. The turtles, you see, enjoyed a communal silence among them as they bumbled along with the motions of their watery depths, he could always see them paddling along beside him, moving through life the way a turtle did.
There was never a moment where Toby ever contemplated the very thought he could or would be separated from his group, he belonged with them and they belonged with him. Toby noticed as life went on and he grew older and wiser, that sometimes a member would disappear, and not return, but that was the life of turtles, they were solitary but never felt any deep loneliness among their ranks.
Sometimes when they swam, the turtles would encounter surprising items in the water, items that were foreign and didn’t seem to belong in the vast oceans, where life was constantly bubbling along. These things just floated lightly in the water, just there… twisting with the movement around it but not reacting. It just drifted, like a dandelion seed being blown by a child on a still day.
The fine sheets looked glossy; an element of transparency was about them. The light would skip along the surface and into the water, darting and changing. When it hit the items, it seemed to disappear into it, like it was being sucked into the pale white. There were glossy tubes too, that drifted downwards, but didn’t seem to move themselves. They looked like undeniably delicious jellyfish, but they didn’t bumble along, they just sank lifelessly downwards.
Toby was always wary of these items; he’d heard many a story of how getting close to unusual and foreign items caused many of his fellow sea dwellers pain. Some had even been killed by these things that drifted, for they had the appearance of something innocent, something that was just, there. But these objects were deadly. He didn’t know what they were, but he didn’t want to find out. He would never venture toward anything that looked still in the deep blue, stillness in the deep blue could only mean one thing, especially for a turtle.
Toby was paddling along in the water one day, when he saw beautiful seaweed glistening in the water. It looked so shiny and perfect, so well structured, Toby could just nibble it all day. It looked so delicious. Toby wadded towards it, eager for a taste. He opened his mouth and chomped on it, yet it didn’t break as easily as he expected. It took several chomps to get a nice chunk, but it tasted horrible, like a toxic mush and was brittle in texture, he barely managed to break it into bite-sized pieces, he felt hungry and wanted food, so he kept nibbling. The seaweed wasn’t sitting right in his throat, it scratched his insides, it stung slightly but he thought it was just the way it grew, he felt full regardless and moved on.
Toby visited the seaweed that was netted together constantly to fulfil his need for food, but slowly the food made him feel ill. It would hurt his body and while he felt full, he was drained of energy, he moved slowly, slower than ever. Day by day after eating his fill and sleeping through the day, Toby didn’t notice his body starting to shut down. He didn’t know the pain in his stomach was starvation, or his slow, aching movements were his body slowly shutting down from his lack of real food. Really, it was rather unfortunate that Toby died slowly. That one day he slowed to a halt and stopped completely. Lying dead in the water from the plastic that had been put there by humans that would spend days out on boats in the hopes to see him swishing through the water. Now they would see him floating lifelessly on its surface, like a sheet of plastic.
by Ashleigh Vasey
About The Green Line
The Green Line is part of a third year collaborative project exploring our personal connection with the ongoing climate crisis. Over the next month we will be publishing a variety of pieces from the student community.
Find out more about The Green Line here.
Read entry One here.