The trade-off would dominate her thinking every day from then on. The urge to gulp and the yearning to keep the music available. She realised that she was having all these thoughts while he was still stuck in her mouth. She sat up, opened up and said ‘ah’ and took him out again.

“Sorry about that,” she said, “Perils of yawning.”

“You don’t really need to apologise,” he said, “I’ve loved being in my shell for some time, but it was much nicer in there.”

“I’m surprised and glad you like it,” she said, “I think I could sleep without gagging if you want to spend the night in there. It’d be rather wet though, but I suspect a shell man from the seaside is used to that.”

“I am at that,” said the Marine Musician as she helped him gently back into her mouth.

An idea finally came to her the next morning. She left him at home for a while and went out and came home with a brand new video camera.

“They make the best audio recorders, and I like to see you anyway,” she said, and spent weeks recording all of his songs, which he sung both from within the shell and out in view in front of it.

She would copy the films to a hard drive and burn multiple DVD backups of each one. Soon she had a collection of his entire repertoire.

“Thank you so much for doing all that,” she said, “Now I can always listen to your songs.”

“You can anyway,” he said, “I don’t plan to leave you.”

“I know,” said Surfergirl, “But I think it might be hard for me to hear them coming from my belly.”

He ran over her body and sat down on her belly and started singing. She reached towards him and cupped his head with her hand, to stop the song.

“Not quite what I meant,” she said, “The acoustics aren’t so feasible on the inside.”

“On the inside? I’ve never been that far down, just into your mouth.”

“It’ll be your chance to explore new territory,” said Surfergirl.

“Do you mean …? Are you going to eat me?”

“You filled a need that day on the beach, and ever since. I can’t think of anyone else I’d rather have had in my life, and yet the whole time I was in two minds about hearing your sweet music and eating you up. Now that the recordings are all made, I can have both.”

“You were just what I needed too,” said the Marine Musician, “I couldn’t be happier that we came together.”

“Even with the way it’s worked out?”

“I could just never dislike you.”

“I … Well words are awkward, I know. Let’s just get it happening,” said Surfergirl.

“Sure,” said the Marine Musician, “I mean, once I’m in there, you can start playing back the recordings I guess.”

“They’d make a nice backing track now, with the volume turned down low,” she said, and started one of the songs playing.