Fever dreams

So, since Sunday afternoon, I've been sick.

Not so sick that I'm unable to eat or writhing on the floor in agony or anything like that. Just a bad cold, a serious sore throat and a low-grade fever.

But the latter was enough to make sleep the last few nights an extremely interesting adventure.

Sunday night, they were mostly funny. Some former co-workers showed up in a beat-up minivan to take me to lunch. I realized as I climbed in that I was only wearing my bathrobe.

In most dreams like this, where I find myself in my underwear or otherwise under-dressed, I usually try to hide or cover myself with something. In this one, when one of my former colleagues questioned my attire, I said something like, "Listen, some of us interpret Casual Fridays differently than others. Deal with it, {Former Co-worker}." At which point she burst into tears.

Apparently, fevers make me sassy and kind of mean-spirited.

Then, last night, my subconscious decided I'd had enough of the funny.

Bubba and I were playing in a huge, green meadow, surrounded by lush, forested hills. Despite his lack of opposable thumbs, he was picking up chalk and drawing things on a piece of paper, and I congratulated him for being the world's most brilliant dog (naturally).

The weather was much like it's been the past week in Ohio: Sunny, warm, windy, with just a touch of something extra in the air to remind you that it IS fall, even if it's 80 degrees outside.

It was beautiful. We were playing. We were happy.

Then, from the edges of the woods, we saw them creeping slowly. First one, then a whole pack of them, in all shapes and sizes.

Wolves.

Some gray, some black, some pure white. Some small, some towering over my head.

All creeping toward us, all focused hungrily on my little dog, who hadn't seen them yet, who was still happily playing in front of me.

I grabbed him up in my arms like a baby (proving that this was, indeed a dream; in real life he weighs more than 90 pounds) and held my arm out in front of him. Somehow I knew the wolves wouldn't bite me; they couldn't get near him if I was blocking the way.

But they kept advancing. And their eyes were hungry.

And I looked down at the shivering dog in my arms. And his fur had gone completely white with fear.

A woman appeared at the edge of the woods, carrying a shepherd's crook. I called to her, asking her to call off the wolves. She did, and they left reluctantly.

But as she approached us, I saw that she was crying.

"I'm sorry," she said. "It isn't forever." And then she walked back into the woods.

Some dreams don't need professional analysis.

I really wish I could forget this one.

P.S.: The image at the top of this post came up when I Google-imaged "fever dreams." It's pretty close to what the woods looked like in mine. Freaky.