word - What in the shells is this puzzle?

Clergyman's wife tells story of picking up a muscle.

^{Solution: $\require{color}\definecolor{hint}{RGB}{1,124,233} \small\color{hint}{\textsf{5 words}}$}

Answer

From the title:

The word that jumps out the most is "shells". My first thought was that this might mean that we need to find synonyms and only take the outer/inner letters, but this didn't lead me anywhere. Later in The Sphinx's Lair @Alconja suggested that maybe "shells" means the words could be arranged in a matryoshka doll-like pattern, i.e. A(B(C(D)E)F)G, which I thought was a really good idea.

From the hint:

The color of "5 words" is 0x17ce9 = 97513, which I think gives the length of each of our 5 words in order.

Putting this together:

Clergyman's wife tells story of picking up a muscle.
a

Clergyman's wife tells story of picking up a muscle.
lat

Clergyman's wife tells story of picking up a muscle.
elate

Clergyman's wife tells story of picking up a muscle.
relates

Clergyman's wife tells story of picking up a muscle.
prelatess