Dream Journal

8/23/19 Beached Ray

I was with a group of people touring a beautiful nature reserve. It must've been tropical, since the water
was warm and blue, and all the flora was lush and vibrant. We were walking along a main dirt and gravel path alongside a deep stream. The reserve was popular with turtles, so there was always one in sight, either on the path or in the water.
At times I would dive into the stream to swim. When I opened my eyes it was so clear that I could see the fine ripples of sand on the riverbed, speckled with shells and turtles laying on the bottom here and there. It felt so natural to swim in this water, as if I didn't need to hold my breath.
Eventually I got ahead of the group, but would soon come running back, for lying on the path ahead of me was a gigantic stingray. There must have been heavy rains that caused the river to flood since there was no way it could have gotten there. My heart reached out to it and I ran to see if it was still alive.
It was so big. It looked like an Australian whipray, but thicker and less spotted. It looked pretty dried-out too, and there were no signs of life. I still wanted to returned it to the water where it would be off of the path and could properly pass in its home.
I ran back to my group to explain the situation, convincing them to help me carry it back into the stream. We all gathered around the beached ray and lifted it by the wings. It felt like sticky heavy styrofoam as we maneuvered it into the water.
However as it splashed through the surface, it began to swim! Slowly and sickly, but quite surprisingly, it swam like a zebra shark through the stream, probably heading to the sea.
I exclaimed with excitement, "she's alive!" just before my alarm woke me up.