Water Within, Water Without

I decided I should talk to her about her memories. This would give me some clues, and if I could get the people here to talk about dry land, then, somewhere, there would _be_ dry land. The people and the scenery were connected, part of the same dream.

"So, where did you get on the boat?" I asked. "Getting off again now," she replied, and dived into the sea. As I waited, the turbulence above her subsided and became calm. I heard a thud behind me, and turned to see the woman climbing out of a trapdoor in the deck. With a joyful skip, she leapt into the ocean again.

Beneath the trapdoor was a ladder. I climbed down it and found myself in a huge green room, below me a swimming pool with an inflatable red boat floating in it. A young girl looked up and waved at me. "Aren't you going to wave back?" she called.

No, I thought, holding on tight to the metal rails of the ladder ...

... which vanished.

I fell into the pool. When I emerged, I was in the middle of the ocean, looking up at the woman on the boat.