Ramone
Legacy Name: Ramone

And that's just the way he liked it.

He also liked the sand, the sea foam on the shore, and the way the gulls cried softly in the morning mist.

What he hated was the sea itself and the creatures it held hidden within its angry chambers.

When he was a hatchling, freshly freed from the sandy cradle his mother lovingly carved on the shore, he made his way to the sea. With frantic fury, he cast himself into the waters and tumbled along in the currents.

He did not see the tiger shark, or would have known that it sought to catch his fragile body in its teeth.

Ramone survived the jaws of the shark, but not without the consequences of such a survival.

His flipper was mangled and his eye was suddenly a knotted mass of loose flesh.

He had since stayed on the shore.

Safe in the sand.

Watching the sea foam glide over the shore.

Listening to the gulls cry softly in the morning mist.

Alone.

And that's just the way he liked it.

He watched many, many generations of young sea turtles make the same journey, tossing themselves into the sea.

What careless, foolish creatures they were in his eye. They did not know the truth: the sea was a dangerous, cruel place. But he had been blessed with the opportunity to see, and even survive, the truth about the world.

In June, Abel came out of the sand in a flurry of tiny flippers.

He was small, even for a hatchling. Unlike his siblings, who flopped along in the sand towards the sea, he floundered in the opposite direction.

Ramone was alone, but that would come to an end, because Abel would find the salty, crusty sea turtle.

And being with Ramone was just the way he liked it.

Ramone found Abel incorrigible, insufferable, and a nuisance.

But he grew on him like a stubborn, little barnacle.

And Abel regarded Ramone with such love and reverence. He also found his fear and hatred for the sea in his own heart without ever setting a flipper into the waters himself.

This wasn't evident to Ramone immediately. But when it was, Ramone saw the sea differently.

And he saw the wasted potential in Abel.

And in seeing it in Abel, he saw it in himself as well.

He tried to convince Abel to make his voyage into the sea, to wade among the seaweed and embrace the true life of a sea turtle. But Abel would not part from his companion, from his only friend.

So, they faced the sea together.

And that was just the way they liked it.