This tale is an adaptation of Loren Eiseley’s "The Star Thrower."

 

Upon a tempestuous day, a man found himself strolling along the desolate strand. Midway through his coastal wandering, his gaze was drawn to a young girl standing by the water's edge.

Every so often, she would bend down, retrieve a solitary object from the yielding sand, and cast it out into the churning sea.

The man approached her and inquired, "What is it that you are doing here?" "I am saving the starfish," the girl replied. "When the ocean grows restless and storm-tossed, the tides abandon them here upon the shore. Should no one return them to the deep, they will languish on these sands and perish."

A faint, perhaps patronizing, smile touched the man's lips. "Your endeavor is certainly noble," he observed, "but do you not see the thousands of starfish strewn across this endless beach? What difference could saving a mere handful possibly make?"

Without uttering a word, the girl bowed toward the earth once more, gathered a fallen star from the shore, and flung it with all her earthly might back into the ocean's embrace. Turning her steady gaze upon the man, she said,

 

"For this one, everything changed."