The sea floor sparkles with starfish and green anemones. Among the pale sands, a dark passage waits. No fish has ever swum through it.
Bollino puffs up, up, until he's round as a ball. "Let's go," he whispers, and pushes himself toward the dark between the anemones.
Green tentacles brush his tip. He slides inside. Salt and old sand perfume the passage. The darkness swallows him whole.
Squeak. Squeak. The rough walls squeeze his round body. He puffs up to push forward, but the dark makes him curl up tight. "I can't see a thing."
His faint glow fades into the shadows. Bollino is wedged in, all alone, and the light no longer reaches from anywhere.
He deflates just a little. The tip of his tail taps the floor. *Click.* A shell lights up deep blue.
Then the one beside it pulses amber. Then ten more flare up along the wall. The whole cave bursts into waves of color.
Bollino strokes another shell. It chimes like a tiny bell. The glow shifts to rose gold.
He puffs up to grab more. But the passage is narrow. Help! The trapped shells scratch his ribs with every push.
*Pfft.* A pufferfish nuzzles him with a wet snout. Bollino deflates, rolling out with three shells. The anemones sway. "Just one more," says the pufferfish. All four turn around together.
