Knees. Nudibranc. Brance. Rancid. Ibran. Nu.

I brainstorm names for a kelp doll in the cave.

I change out the eight shells on the floor, I lay them in a large square, scallop and auger and abalone.

I say hello to Finzee and Fluorescent; Pinky and Popper; Yewel and Voyage. I say hello to the nineteen other kelp dolls.

I say hello to Knees; no, Nudibranc or Nu or Branceemee.

I sit on the floor, swim outside in circles, trace the rock for more cracks but it's got only the one still, I pop open the cubby on the ceiling and count up the shells, still fifteen.

My fingers mix up the letters in my name, trying words that end the same (Hand, Wand, Land), most of them don't sound terrible but they don't sound quite right either.

And I know why.

Incidentally, I have named this unnamed pink doll, Unnamed Pink Doll, so of course nothing else sounds right. But the doll's name can't stay Unnamed Pink Doll forever, so I should just pick something and make myself get used to it.

I sign out the letters in my name over and over, and assign each of the eight shells on the floor to one of the nine letters in my name, plus "c" to the rock outside. I mix up abalone shells that stand for "n" and "u" with the red-ish scallop shells that represent "d" and "i" with the magenta-ish scallop shells that stand for "b" and "r" with auger shells that represent "a" and "n" and leave a gaping hole for the rock outside that represents "c" but maybe I should've just let the gaping hole represent "c."

Nduirbacn. Ducibrnan. Duibra. Ridibac.

I pick Arbincu.

Not because I like it a ton, but because it...is. It is a thing. And I think you can pronounce it, unlike with dbriunn or anbcidu or something--it doesn't have a cluster of consonant letters all together.

And I pick it because I'm tired and Ange and Parro won't be at the adoption class forever and I didn't eat between leaving the store and coming to the cave to spare myself going any longer with the incessant pressure in my head of needing to figure out this doll's name who reminds me of me and I'm tired.

Hi, Unnamed Pink Doll, is it okay if I call you Arbincu now?

It's a weird name, I know, I won't tell Parro.

Especially since he might figure out it's made out of the letters of my name, which might make him ask why I did that, which might make me explain how the doll reminds me of me, but that sounds vain and proud, doesn't it? Naming one of my dolls after myself? That fact might make me explain I didn't mean it like that, just, between Hamme and "they" and this doll who reminds me of me, I figured out maybe I don't feel like a girl, or maybe I do but I'd just feel more confident about me existing if I wasn't expected to live like big-boned Wrass with her career and how she can carry a wagon from and to the surface all by herself, or be in the box with Sta or Mackere or Mum, with their friends and ways of moving and how they fit in with people.

So I won't tell Parro.

Plus I haven't even told Ange yet about the girlfriend thing Parro told me I should tell him about, because I don't know how to go up to him without interrupting something, and how do I say it the right way...

But enough about me, Unnamed Pink Doll-also-known-as-Arbincu. How are you? Are you getting along with the dolls and shells in this cave? Does it get too dark, or are you okay with that?

I should go. I'm tired. I might go lie in my bed, even though I'll just think more and try to sleep instead of actually sleeping, lying there with the quilt scratching my cheek.

I rearrange the shells into a neater square in the middle of the cave, then go outside, and ease the rock into the cave's entrance, smearing mud over most of it to hide it and the single crack.

So how are you doing now? Is it too dark? Are you okay in the cave with the rock hiding the entrance, Unnamed Pink Doll-also-known-as-Arbincu?

***

I go home and I lie in bed and I twist side to side and I push the quilt up and down my cheek and my shoulder and I sleep, and I wake with the vibrations of Parro and Ange returning from their adoption class late in the night, and I wake to something else much later, and I dream Mum or Da waddle through the tree farm on solid land, with me watching them under the moons-light without that black cloth covering my eyes, but they morph into crabs, bending and scuttling.

They're Arbincu's knees, and Arbincu and Finzee dance together, little woven wrist nubs (they don't have hands, their doll-wrists just end) touching and tapping. Fluorescent slips outside the rock-covered entrance and swims down to the volcano-canyon, to join a swarm of bioluminescent green tube worms, disguising their round head with mud. Voyage hides in the corner of the cave, goes like a hermit crab and climbs into the cowrie shell, Voyage shrinks tiny enough to barely fit. But Voyage's tiny ankle fins poke out, and Pinky grabs them, and dances in a circle on the floor, with Voyage-in-the-cowrie-shell swinging around like an angler's dark lantern orb stuck in a vortex, and Popper runs away from the cave too, to visit the surface and the beaches where kelp washes up and feeds land critters, but kelp-doll Popper goes to the beaches with an auger-shell spear to fight off the land critters who might eat her, those seabirds and things with four legs, and all the kelp on the muddy beach is actually the nineteen dolls I haven't named yet, unmade of their stitching and beady black eyes.

I dream Easel opens all the kitchen cupboards and eats all the rice and turns on the stove but leaves it on, so the water starts to boil on its surface, bubbling up and wobbling the mesh filter overhead, and Easel leaves the house and dumps all the spices from our cupboards down the street and scrapes the skin around his tail with his teeth to rip off the layer of kelp keeping him from being a real angler fish. But beneath the layer of kelp, there's just another layer of kelp, a darker blue, to go with the dark-red orb dangling above his forehead.

I dream Parro and Ange come home from their next adoption class and bring a baby with them, Parro tries naming the baby Murr but Ange insists on Lobste. I push between them to see the baby sleeping on the sagging couch but the baby's nothing but a red Monsters of the Deep shirt with yellow putty poking out the sleeves.

I try to tell Parro and Ange the baby is just putty inside a shirt but Hamme's there saying the baby should be named after a shell, a very strong and unique shell like humagumdrum and I've never heard of a humagumdrum so I wonder how Hamme knows about it but I'm too worried to ask about it since if this is a strong and unique shell, surely everybody knows about it so why don't I?

Then I'm outside and Easel has grown large enough to fill the width of the spice-tasting street, and he's shed more skins which lie greenish and discarded in the murky mud, and he's gotten stuck between our storefront and the front of another store and he's wriggling for help but I can't fit my hands between his bright blue skin and the storefront to pry him out, plus my eyes are stinging from the spices spilled in the water, and Easel sheds another skin which falls and drapes over me so I can't see anything.

Then Arbincu's walking on their knees in a giant glass theater and Mum and Da go on a date in the trees, which I witness through the dark cloth mask on my face, and Wrass complains about none of her boyfriends liking her wooden figurines and I try walking through the trees after Mum because I have to tell her to help Wrass's figurines like her boyfriend and that Arbincu is on their knees in a theater where the music's too loud, but I can't hold my breath that long and I blindly stumble through tree branches that rub like glass and I fall into some mud or the rice patties beside the tree farm and Parro's baby is there, yellow putty in a plain white rice shirt, pulling me up from the ground with the shirt fringe turning into fingers and I can breathe somehow but no, I have to go help Arbincu get out of the theater on my own so I waddle out of the trees and Parro's baby quits breathing instead of me.

I wake up. I toss and turn and push the quilts up my cheek and down my neck and my eyes won't stay open and I go to sleep again and Easel wiggles out, swimming to a theater inside a secret cave, shedding skins over the whole street.