The ripple of jelly came in little waves beneath the mesoglea as the Jellyfish adjusted to the shift in weight. Globules of flesh rose and fell under us so that for a few minutes Lana, Kate and James bobbed up and down where they were sitting. The tentacles nearest to us went wild, waggling and swooshing in the water so that clouds of spray covered our work. Then it all calmed down again, and we were able to get our pens back out. This morning we were writing a play which we were going to be allowed to perform later on in the week instead of a lecture, so we were all enjoying it. It was about a farmer who meets some aliens, and it had a complicated plot, but we still thought it would be very funny. Well, me, Kate and James did. Lana wanted it to end tragically, with most of the characters dying. I wasn’t absolutely sure the individual scenes that we’d taken responsibility for were going to link together very well. Still, we were all concentrating and creating something together, and we were all having fun.

‘Get ready!’ shouted Soldier John from behind us again.

‘Flip’s sake,’ muttered Lana.

We gripped our plastic as we continued to write. The feet pounded behind us again, this time going in the other direction. There was a lot of noise too. Organised noise, which is unusual, as Soldier John spends much of his time telling people to ‘shut the eff up’.

The Jellyfish lurched to the right. We grabbed our stuff again. It was lucky we were on the sticky part of the creature and its gloop held us in one place.

‘What is it that they’re all doing?’ I asked.

‘They’d better not be trying to tip the Jellyfish over,’ said Lana. ‘Because that’s seriously what it looks like, and I don’t want to get wet.’

‘Or die,’ said James.

‘Hmmm,’ she agreed.

‘Uh oh!’ said James, ‘Somebody’s fallen in. Oh . . . yes, no . . . it’s two people.’

‘What!’ Lana put down her pen, stabbing it into the Jellyfish to keep it in one place. She stood up gleefully to get a better view.

‘Yes, there’s definitely two,’ said James.

At the point where the Jellyfish had tilted from the weight of all the people, there was now a big fluster of movement and fuss, and water was definitely being splashed around too.

‘They’ve been down there a while, haven’t they?’ said Kate. ‘I hope they’re OK.’

‘It’s not that long yet,’ said James.

On its high side, the Jellyfish started to seep back into the water, its hard surface bending back down again, and the mucus-y jelly beneath perceptibly moving almost as a liquid, reforming and adjusting. In a final lunge it righted itself, sending those jelly ripples across the surface of the mesoglea.