A shell of a game

This is the calm place that doesn't change but just sways lightly in the current; growing scales, barnacles, pearls... transforming shipwrecks into coral.  Making a bit of a whale sound, but whooshier.  

“That is just what life is when it is beautiful and happy – a game! Naturally, one can also do all kinds of other things with it, make a duty, or a battleground, or a prison of it, but that does not make it any prettier.”
Hermann Hesse, The Journey to the East