Toruga

It spends its mornings finding the exact right rock, one that has been in the sun long enough to matter, and settling onto it with the gravity of an old man taking his chair. Cold water it avoids on principle; a hot spring it will monopolize for hours, steam curling off the ridges of its shell. When threatened it does not flee, because it cannot, so instead it pulls in tight and heats its plates until the seams run bright and the ground beneath it smokes, and it waits, quite content, for the problem to reconsider.