I remember the bright colours, the tangy sweet touch melting on your tongue, the spoon sliding, cutting through. I remember that little polite, quivering wobble. And you could see through it, almost. See the spoon beneath as you held it in mid-air, balancing it carefully on the way to your mouth.

Or maybe I just remember what other people have said about it. Maybe my memories aren’t real. Because some days I’m not even sure if I’m real (feeling pathetic alert!). Some days it would be lovely if I wasn’t.

Our jelly is different. When you’re up close, touching it all the time, you can feel variations. Little changes in the texture as you walk across it. Sometimes the change is so subtle you don’t notice, until you do notice. Suddenly your feet are sinking into wet, slimy flesh when seconds before you’d been walking on hard, smooth floor.

In the middle, where the Big House is, and where we have our driftwood fires, the flesh is hard so that if you bang on it you can make a noise like a drum. You always know it’s not secure, though. You can always feel that beneath the armoured coating there is something muscular, ready and moving. It’s like a vibration, maybe a low humming sensation. There are small pits here too, indentations which pool with fresh water that you can drink. I guess the water tastes of the Jellyfish – bland, but somehow also bitter – but I can’t remember how fresh water is supposed to taste so it doesn’t bother me. The pools move around as the Jellyfish shifts around, but they’re always there somewhere, even when it’s stormy.

At the edges of the Jellyfish the flesh gets softer, more rubbery and stretchy. Sometimes your feet seep into it like you’re being absorbed. It’s not slippery though; the mucus sticks to you, holding you to the surface. When you stand up, or pull your feet away, a slimy trail of translucent goo falls off you too, pulling back into the creature’s skin. Interesting fact: you can eat that goo. It doesn’t taste very nice, but sometimes we eat it when the fish supplies run low. I hate the feeling of that sliding, wobbling mass in my mouth, though. And it tastes the same if you vomit it back up again.