justwrite feeling literal June 22

When my cousin Victoria can't see the dolphins in the ocean, she makes up her own, points at the horizon and tells me to look, right there! She can't see the dolphins because she can't think of them as just fins. She imagines whole dolphins floating just above the waves. We look for shells together and I find none. She brings me the smallest clams, scattered in the sand like faraway stars, barely bright enough to call light. When waves come up to my ankles, she says they're big, asks me to pick her up, or runs to dry sand or the safety of the umbrella. The whole ocean looks small to me, like I could swim across if the currents were going my way. I point at the dolphins just offshore, tell Victoria to look. She squints behind her smudged sunglasses, her forehead creased in the middle. She points in a different direction. "Look! Dolphins! Right there!" I wonder what she sees.