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At night they read her a children’s encyclopaedia. They could as well be citing a phone book or a periodic table – Shell enjoyed the voice not the content, and only some words reached her sleepy consciousness, for example, «dragon of the commode silent».

«Nonsense,» she thought, «Dragons and furniture don’t come together, and commodes definitely have nothing to say, why point out that it’s silent?» She was imagining an antique chest of drawers as she was drifting away.

In the morning she didn’t care about lizards and their peculiar habitats – she scolded herself for going to sleep far too fast, not having enough time to enjoy the reading rare enough. She had to learn to read as fast as possible.

The encyclopaedia, once a collections of lullabies, had to end up in her hands sooner or later. The disappointing title «Dragon of the Komodo Island» in it with a picture of a thick-hide goanna passing by on heavy paws made Shell realise that some mysteries better stayed mysteries…

That all was, of course, long before she started to call herself Shell, meaning it was before the school trip in the 7th form. Music in her headphones occupied her much better than the teacher’s voice, and the view from the bus window – much more than the destination point. Once the group got out of the bus in some historical park, the girl agreed it was not so bad and immediately got lost. Wandering among linden trees and mossy fountains while her classmates were yawning in stuffy museum rooms she stepped on something in the long uncut grass. It was a bullet.

Not willing to find out where it might have come from and from what weapon she imagined all the cause and consequence just to replace them anew a week later.

She took it as a sign, the trove, and set on calling herself Bullet from then on, but it didn’t grow on her, so trying the neighbouring words she got to Shell quite quickly the «shhh» sound landing pleasantly on her tongue.