*****
I needed air bad!!!
Oh God I really was going to die!
What was the deal with this string of bad luck anyway?
I'd miraculously survived falling through the Earth, escaped from pirates and flesh eating mongrels, only to end up drowning in a subterranean tunnel with a man that I'd really been looking forward to kissing again.
Our progress through the water had become easier as the flow of water had equalized throughout the tunnels, but it didn't matter. I was out of air.
In horrified anguish I felt my mouth go against everything my brain ordered it to do and start to open.
You can't breathe seawater! Don't do it!!!
My mouth opened and I drowned.
I did not feel well. Weakly I looked around for Colt and found him. What was going on in this sunken hell of a place?
Why was I breathing seawater? How was such a thing even possible?
There were no answers and yet reality was its own answer.
Colt took my hand and together we swam upward toward the light overhead. We came out of the tunnel and instead of swimming we walked along the floor of the sea toward what appeared to be shallower water ahead.
In desperation to breathe air again and escape whatever false paradigm that we were experiencing we pushed through the water into the air and drowned all over again.
There seemed to be no end to the hacking and coughing up of sea water. Blindly I stumbled forward toward the blurry color of sand in the distance.
My feet touched warm sand and I fell to my face dry heaving even as I rasped air into my starved lungs which felt like they were on fire. My lungs felt like they had been pulled inside out and soaked in a hot sauce bath.
I closed my eyes against the conscious action it took to take a breath and gradually my body took over the rhythmic function of breathing again. The sand was warm and I felt myself drift into unconsciousness in an effort to get away from the pain of breathing.