Out past the sandbar there is an arch of coral standing up out of the shallow water, and nobody has ever gone over it. Leo has been trying all summer. He is the fastest thing in the sea and he gets higher off that water than anything on the whole reef, and he has worn a patch of the sand smooth starting from exactly the right spot, over and over, night after night. Then a quiet old friend called Isie turns up. She does not go anywhere near as high as Leo. She just does not come down. A gentle bedtime story about the something else that sits underneath being glad for somebody, and about a boy who found out he wanted to watch it happen again. Broadcasting from the end of the driveway in bare feet, where a mailbox named Bill watched a very good parcel go past him to somebody else and has been happily thinking about it ever since.

Settle in, dreamer. You can have both of those. They are both yours.

Desmond has been working on something, and tonight he finally does it for the others. It is an impression of Odin, the oldest and slowest and kindest fish on the whole reef, and it is very, very good. The cousins come apart laughing. They ask for it again. They ask for it eleven more times. And then Odin comes out of his hollow, which Odin does not do, because he had heard everybody laughing and he had something he wanted to tell them. A gentle bedtime story about the difference between the two kinds of laughing, and about a joke you can only fix by making a better one. Broadcasting from the laundry room very late, where a sock named SOCK is still looking for his brother and Goofy Daddy does an impression he is extremely proud of.

Settle in, dreamer. Have a look, every so often, at who is laughing.

Jack finds a little piece of sea glass on the sand, worn soft and smooth by years and years of ocean. When he holds it up, the moon shines right through it and comes out the green of the inside of a wave. It is the first thing in the whole Coral Shallows that belongs to only him, and he tucks it away under his flipper where nobody else can reach. Then he goes out to the far wall, further than the cousins usually go, and meets somebody who lives in a long dark crack in the coral and has never once wanted to leave it. A gentle bedtime story about the hardest kind of giving, and about a small green light in a place that never had one. Broadcasting from the end of the driveway in bare feet, where the asphalt is still warm from the day and a mailbox named Bill has been keeping one postcard safe for years without ever knowing what it says.

Settle in, dreamer. Some things are worth more where you put them than where you keep them.