Hydrophobic 

| , hīdro ' fōbik |

Adjective.
Tending to repel or fail to mix with water.

That is what I, Fern Wilson, was experiencing this Saturday of May, when I slipped and fell into the ocean off the family dock.

The first thing I noticed was the shock of the cold. It was like snakes and bitten into my skin and hung there till I went numb. It penetrated my skin and sucked all sensitivity away.  It scared me and it seemed the cold knew that. It turned my blood into acid and my spine into crawling beetles. I shivered unconsciously, uncontrollably. It seemed the sheer freeze had invaded my privacy, ripping from one world and into another, one that I had no control over. It was a nasty cold, an angry cold. the kind of iciness you only feel when you're shocked and heart broken.

The second was the sound. There was none. It seemed I was alone with the cold. I was wrong though, there was a sound, and overpowering, obstreperous, and tremendous sound. A sound that pounded against my skull at first like a pernickety, apathetic, crow, then not unlike the imprudent, egregious, lion's roar. My normally placid heart was startling me with it's incessant, loquacious, maybe even chaotic pounding.

I didn't dare open my eyes. The experience was already frightening enough. My arms and legs seemed unable to respond to the beating drum on my heart, but nothing would mollify the burning in my lungs. I did not have the asset amount of air down here in the middle of the sea. It made my brain lethargic, this whole experience was becoming nondescript. The logorrhea of my heart was becoming putative background music.

This all fueled my plethora of prosaic, truculent fear.

There was no levity in my situation. All movement was not facile, but formidable. My brain was taciturn in the argument to force myself to move, as if considering the rest of my body to be onerous. My vehement fear of drowning capitulated my limbs in a fixed position.

I dare not move, though I knew that I must.

It was only after I felt the adroit grip on my arms I dare vacillate  to open my eyes. My fear seemed so puerile to stimulate this kind of reaction. I was being pulled upward, towards the light and the air. Still with the sedulous and vociferous nagging to open my eyes. It made me feel timorous as the polemic continued within me.

Finally deciding it would be flippant of myself to not sneak a glance as my savior, I pried open my eyelids and winced and the salt stung them and made my vision blurry.

It was fuzzy but I could make out long, wavy, salubrious hair, and a quintessential, luminous face that shone like the moon. It was a young woman, who seemed an innocuous, altruistic, apparition, a she hefted me through the water with such grace I kept ruminating how such power could be achieved. I ogled and her strong hands held onto my arm, I could have sworn a line of small black pebbly scales ran down the length of them.

My head broke through the surface and I gasped in what seemed buckets of air. After latching my frozen fingers onto the edge of the dock, I turned back in hope our meeting would not be laconic.

She must have been diffident, or afraid of me being judgmental. I would not impugn my savior, the very thought was ludicrous. I stared and stared into the dark black water that sent my heart racing, if I hadn't saw her with my own eyes I might have though she was a dream.

She was gone, and I never wanted to go near the water again.