Amid the hot grit of the estuarine beach, a cool light glints. Not the habitual shade of mussel shells, nor even the shimmer of sea glass, this is a blue so bright that at first I mistake it for a kind of plastic, perhaps the discarded part of a pair of goggles.
I’m about to pick it up when something prompts me to pause, mid-swoop; an inkling that this is not synthetic, but animal.