I woke up screaming. Again. No chains, no altar, no dungeon orgy—worse. So much worse.
Mud. Piles of it. And shit. Not metaphorical shit. Real, steaming, animal shit. Everywhere. I was barefoot, obviously. Because my dream self hates me. And I was holding a wooden pitchfork. A pitchfork. What even is that?
There was a hut. One room. One. No windows. A door that creaked like the bowels of a dying ogre. Inside: straw bed, dented pots, some lumpy man snoring on a lice mattress, and children. So many children. Sticky. Wailing. Feral. And they kept calling me mama. I don't even remember birthing them! Did I black out for nine months? Multiple times?
One of them threw a turnip at my head.
I tried to run. Nope. Yard full of geese. Violent, hissing beasts with murder in their eyes. I tripped over a pig and landed in something warm and deeply wrong. My dress—a hideous brown sack tied with twine—rode up my thighs, and no one cared. Because no one in that gods-forsaken mudhole had the decency to be scandalized. Not even the cows.
I tried to find a mirror. There was none. I tried to cast a spell. Nothing happened. I tried to seduce the milkman. He was ninety-seven, deaf, and blind. But married. Of course.
And that idiot dream-husband of mine? Woke up, scratched himself, and told me to fetch water from the creek "before the sun got lazy." I stabbed him with the pitchfork. Or tried to. It bounced off his calluses.
Then came the worst part.
Even in the dream I knew it was a dream. I kept screaming, "Wake up, wake up, wake up!" and the world just got more vivid. I could smell the goat cheese. I could feel the blisters. One of the children tried to braid my hair with bits of hay and told me I used to be beautiful, once. Before the "accident."
I don't know what the accident was. But I swear, if I ever find that child again, real or not, I'm punting them into the next dimension.
Just as I was milking something I hoped was a cow, the dragon landed.
In the dream.
Except he wasn't my dragon. He was pink. Fluffy. Wearing an apron. He said, "Time for the midday porridge, dearest." I screamed. The sky cracked open. I fell into darkness.
And woke up curled against my actual dragon's actual tail, sweaty, panting, and whispering, "Tell me I'm not a farmer's wife. Please tell me."
He didn't open his eyes. Just murmured, "No more mushroom wine before bed."
I've never hugged him so hard in my life.
Never. Again.
I swear if I ever see a turnip in real life, I'm setting it on fire.