Saya and the Dragon Chapter 179: Turnips and Terror

I woke up screaming. Again. No chains, no altar, no dungeon orgy—worse. So much worse.

Mud. Piles of it. And shit. Not taphorical shit. Real, steaming, animal shit. Everywhere. I was barefoot, obviously. Because my dream self hates . 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, so lumpy man snoring on a lice mattress, and children. So many children. Sticky. Wailing. Feral. And they kept calling mama. I don’t even rember birthing them! Did I black out for nine months? Multiple tis?

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 sothing 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 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 ca 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 sll the goat cheese. I could feel the blisters. One of the children tried to braid my hair with bits of hay and told 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 dinsion.

Just as I was milking sothing 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, “Ti for the midday porridge, dearest.” I scread. The sky cracked open. I fell into darkness.

And woke up curled against my actual dragon’s actual tail, sweaty, panting, and whispering, “Tell I’m not a farr’s wife. Please tell .”

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.