Drowning

Last night I dreamt we were both drowning. We thrashed against the endless, non-resisting water, each buoyant on our own but somehow dragging the other down, tethered to each other by visually imperceptible hooks and barbs embedded deep in internal organs, pulling eachother down from the inside. Our eyes met, mine fixed in terror, hers resolved, as calm and serene as the water that refused to resist my flailing limbs to propel us upward. With a silent turn of her eyes, the hooks and barbs retracted, and the water began to churn violently, pushing against her kicking limbs as she lifted herself toward the surface, toward some distant shore that the now furiously raging currents pushed me away from. My own motion now sent me upward on columns of rising water, upward to thankful lungfuls of air and dry land, far from where she had surfaced. I awoke with a start, alone in my bed, the thin layer of sweat bringing the water from dream to reality.