can you hear the fish?

dear ocean, dear salt, dear scent of desperation,

I had a dream that I held a fish in my cold hands, and it spoke to me. Upon waking, I could not remember what the fish said to me, or why I did not find it unusual that it somehow was capable of producing sound with its vocal chords (which, according to the internet, fish do not even have). Here is what I do remember. 

My brother and I, trapped in one hall of a sprawling house built into the side of a cliff that overlooked the ocean. 
The slap of waves against jagged, slick rocks. 
The shriek of gulls carried along by gusts of howling wind.
A certain greyness that pervaded into all the prisoners, until we existed solely as smudges of hardly distinguishable shades. 
The stinging of salt water.
The ache of an empty stomach.

The fish that was my pet and friend was large — a body the size of sub sandwich with a long, trailing tail — and was striped black, yellow, and white. I carried the fish around with me all day, but put it down when there was a disturbance outside. We thought we had a chance of escaping into the other half of the house, which contained a room that was important. I can't remember why it was important; it could have contained weapons or a magical doorway to freedom or simply a warm bath and hot food. In any case, when we all returned in defeat, the fish was limp and cold. We thought it was dead. In a rush, I dumped the questionable contents of black plastic buckets with rattling metal handles onto the concrete floor, filled them with swirling salt water, and poured them into a plastic tub, placing the fish inside.

At first, it lay like all dead fish do, belly up and still. After a moment of bated breath and eyes traitorously close to tears, the fish began to wriggle ever so faintly, until it flipped back over and let out a sigh. How do fish sigh? I can't quite describe it. I imagine it sounds the same as currents do. Regardless, I let out a cheer from where I crouched down, hands pressed against the edge of the container. And then, and this is the moment I remember with perhaps the most clarity, I turned my head ever so slightly to the left and saw a small yellow fish flopping on the ground. It was clearly still clinging to life, reeking of wretchedness and letting out tortured gasps.

I turned to my brother and asked, "Should we save this one too?"

"No," he said, "leave it."

And then he walked away and I turned my eyes away as it succumbed, at last, to death. I whispered to my fish and, in due time, someone else came over, picked the dead fish up, and walked off without a comment.

I don't know why we thought that fish was not worth saving, why we did not deem it as important as the other fish when it was nowhere near as gone as the first had been. In dreams, we are not always as in control as we seem. Perhaps it was as simple as this: one fish could talk and the other could not. Somehow, a voice makes a thing harder to kill.