Spawning salmon
A salmon at the gravel of its birth stream — a journey ending in the act it was made for.
A spawning salmon in a dream is the dream's image of a long journey ending in the single act it was made for. The salmon comes back to the stream it was born in and spawns there; the body is largely used up by the trip. The dream brings the spawning salmon when something in your life — a life's work, a piece of transmission to the next generation, a final return — has reached the gravel where the whole biography was always pointed. A salmon laying its eggs in the right place is the dream affirming that the long upstream was correctly aimed. A salmon dying with the spawning incomplete is the dream noting that the journey consumed the body before the final task was finished, and the next generation, for this fish, will not carry on.