I dreamed I was on a long hike through a rugged jungle. I was following an ancient, stone-paved road through the dense growth. It was cracked and choked with weeds, but it still showed a clearer path than the thick forests on either side.
Groups of exotic animals often wandered past me, deer, leopards, alligators, with brightly colored birds flapping along overhead. As one group rushed past, I looked down and saw they were being chased by two snakes. One was a cobra, and just as I saw it, and turned to hurry away, it noticed me, and it struck.
I felt its fangs go into my calf. It hurt a lot less than I'd thought it would. It was going to bite me again, but I managed to dump my backpack on its head, pinning it to the ground. Then I slid the backpack back along its body so just its head was free, and I stomped down on it, grinding it into the ground and killing it.
I pulled out a handkerchief and tied it tightly around my calf above the bite as a tourniquet. Then I sat down on a boulder beside the road, wondering what to do. I didn't want to walk, because that would spread the poison quicker, but I knew I needed help, and soon.
Just then, a group of local boys ran past, and I called out to them to help me. They stopped and I told them what had happened. I asked if they would go to the bed and breakfast I was supposed to stay at that night, and let them know I was bitten and needed help. They said they would and ran off.
I wasn't very confident that they would actually complete that mission, but they must have, because a young man came back down the path about fifteen minutes later. He had golden skin, huge green eyes, and thick, dark, wavy hair that tumbled around his face in the wind. He almost didn't seem human, he was so beautiful. He said he was the village doctor, and had come to help.
I told him I'd been bitten by a snake, and he asked if I knew which kind. I said it was a cobra, and he was skeptical, and told me cobras didn't live in this area. I pointed over to my backpack, with the dead snake still pinned under it, and he said that, oh, well, obviously I'd been bitten by a cobra. But he said it in a way that made it clear he was laughing at himself. He apologized, and got to work examining the bite.
Even though it hadn't hurt that much at first, my lower calf now felt like it was on fire, and the feeling was spreading up toward my tourniquet. The doctor pulled out a knife and knelt down. He made two little x shaped cuts over each puncture mark, then bent to begin sucking the poison out of the bite. The burning feeling slowly faded, to be replaced by a dull ache. He said that was perfectly normal after that sort of bite, because even though the venom was gone, some damage had been done to those tissues, and only time would heal them up. Until that healing, my leg would be very shaky, and wouldn't hold me, so I should stay off of my feet.
To complete the healing ritual, he said I needed to replace the blood he'd taken, and he took the knife again and made two little x shaped cuts on his own shoulder, telling me to drink the blood that flowed out. I was hesitant, because that sounded just plain gross, and what about hepatitis or HIV or something? But he insisted, and I figured, what the heck, this was a dream anyway, so I licked up the trails of blood that had begun to roll down his arm, and I sucked for a while on the little wounds. It didn't make my leg feel any better, but it satisfied the doctor that we'd done everything we could and should.
He helped me to my feet, pulling my arm around his neck so he could support me on my injured side. He picked up my backpack with his free hand, and we limped along the last mile to my bed and breakfast, where he got me into my bed and made arrangements to extend my booking. I fell asleep before I could thank him for all his help.
I woke up the next day to find a bunch of school kids having breakfast downstairs. This B&B didn't just feed paying guests, but sometimes hosted groups of local kids, because the owners loved children so much. I sat for a while on a sofa with my leg propped up, and was given the job of minding the television remote so the kids wouldn't watch anything inappropriate. Eventually they cleared out and the inn was quiet again. The owner said that since tomorrow was a weekday, they'd be in school, and that the mob scene was only a weekend thing.
After a few days of rest, I was definitely feeling better, but my leg was still achy, and sometimes gave out on me. But the innkeeper came in and told me that the queen demanded that I come pay her a visit, along with a group of teenagers that had come in buses for just that purpose. The B&B was located in what had once been a gatehouse to the grand palace, and the queen had heard I was there, and wanted me to come in so I could thank her personally for the hospitality I'd been shown.
Since I still couldn't walk very well, the innkeeper showed me an enormous peacock that had agreed to let me ride on his back. The teenagers and I went in procession through the gates to the palace. Every building in the huge, sprawling complex had been made of a deep red sandstone that contrasted gorgeously with the lush green of the palms and vines that filled the grounds. The kids went in for their audience, and I was told to wait. After a few minutes it began to rain, and I was purposefully moved to an antechamber with no roof, so I would get all wet. The queen was a vain and spiteful person, apparently. She wanted me to thank her from as humiliated a position as she could put me in.
I curled up under a narrow table to stay as dry as I could, and my peacock spread his tail over me to shelter me. The tail turned out to be amazingly water-tight, so I stayed mostly dry. The guard that was sent to guide and watch me realized that I wasn't actually going to let myself get soaked, and he was tired of getting drenched himself, so he took me into a more sheltered room. He wasn't going to let the bird come with us, but I argued that I had to ride it, because I couldn't walk. The peacock went over to a bed of plants and neatly defecated, proving he was house trained, and apparently fairly sentient.
So the guard took us through, and I met the queen. She had a Cleopatra sort of hair style and was dressed in turquoise silk with huge gold jewelry. I was as obsequious as I could be, because I just wanted out of there. I could tell she thought I was mocking her, but there wasn't really anything she could call out, and she finally got bored of baiting me, and sent me on my way. But she did say my peacock belonged to her, and he had to stay when I left.
I rode back out to the guard house, then got off the peacock's back and sat against a column, wondering what I should do. My leg did feel a lot better, but the doctor had said...
Then the peacock in front of me shivered and transformed into the doctor, wearing the uniform of the palace guard! He told me it had been his pleasure to help me, and that my leg should be fine now, and was healed enough to be all the stronger for being used from here on out. I was much more grateful to him than to the queen, but he wouldn't let me thank him at all, probably because it would make her jealous, and she'd take it out on him if should couldn't punish me. But I felt like I had made a true friend. We said goodbye, and he walked off into the guards' quarters. And then I woke up.
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