2024-06-01 - Autumnal Equinox

Its shell is primarily an earthen brown, split lengthwise through by an aurora of black and white - the widening trail of a comet speeding ever onwards. Below and before the comet, just beyond the halfway point of the shell's side, a burst of yellow like sparks off a forge. Slumped in the sand as it is, halfcocked at a jaunty angle, the splotches of red akin to the foliage of high autumn that adorn the bottom are partially obscured by warm sand. The pattern is one of bilateral symmetry, the only variation being in the placement of patches vermillion, scarlet, and peach.

It is not small, nor large and among its fellows it is neither the sharpest nor the bluntest, not smooth as silk nor rough as gravel. It fits in the middle of the clutch, just as the comet splits its own shell down the center. A thin scratch is its only blemish, running near vertically down the center of the comet on one side, lost to all senses but touch. This, too, fits its middleness.

It is an Equinox, a balance, a promise of change. Endings and beginnings.