Last night a friend was subjected to a baseless but very hurtful personal attack. The worst for her was that it was done anonymously, so even though she has some idea of who it wasn't, there's no way to be sure who it was. The person really hit below the belt, attacking an aspect of my friend's life about which everyone with the same aspect is going to be sensitive, and in which my friend has had enough struggles to shake her confidence in herself, even though she is actually going far above and beyond the average in that area. The attack was totally unjustified and wrong, and the person I think it comes from has no business pointing fingers, as she is not handling that aspect of her own life with much honesty. If it is who I think it is, I'm convinced that the attack was her way of making herself feel better by tearing down someone who she can at least pretend is doing worse.
I didn't realize how mad I was about this until this morning, after I woke from the following dream.
My friend and I are at the Ohio Renaissance Faire. We've both gone in garb, but this year I decided not to go the girly route. While my friend is dressed beautifully in a full skirt, blouse, corset, cloak, and sexy boots, I'm in pants instead. I've put on a chainmail shirt, and I've got a sword on a belt and a shield strapped to my back. I look like I am ready to kick some ruffian butt.
We're walking around looking at stuff in the shops. Our kids are with us, but our husbands aren't. They are at the faire, but they've gone to check something out that doesn't interest us. We have a plan to meet for lunch shortly and all go watch shows together.
As we turn to leave the store we're in, the kids ask to visit a specific shop that has padded toys that mimic weapons, so kids can pretend to be knights of old or play stories like Robin Hood without hurting each other. The stores and stages circle around the border of the property and cross in the middle, almost loosely forming kind of a squished figure 8. We have to cross the grass to get to that store. We talk about walking the rest of the way around to get to it, but none of the stores in that direction interest us, so we start cutting across the grass.
Immediately, a former friend of ours jumps in front of us. She is wearing a long dark cloak over a very skimpy dress. She has her hood up, casting a shadow over her face. On her hands are really long, dark velvety gloves. She physically looks different than normal, like she's lost a bunch of weight, even though she didn't start out with any extra. Now, she's gaunt and creepy looking: Bimbette, the wicked sorceress of ill repute.
She tells us we can't go that way because that's the way the kids want to go, and you can't just give kids what they want.
My friend points out that we are going this way because we don't have any interest in the rest of the stores along the loop, but I don't think that's necessary. It isn't this woman's business if we want to do something the kids want. I tell her to buzz off.
Bimbette looks annoyed, and starts shouting that we should be locked up for breaking "the rules." There are no rules at the Ren Faire about which direction you may walk, and there are lots of other people in the grassy area. (Oddly, none of them are paying any attention to us.) Whatever "rules" she's talking about are all in her head.
We ignore her and try to walk around her, and she slaps my friend across the face with her gloved hand. I reach for that hand, but she draws it back quickly and steps away. On my friend's face is a red mark from the slap. It starts to spread, and I realize that Bimbette had something nasty on the glove. It looks like it is causing an allergic reaction. Somehow, I am sure she has an antidote to it in one of the little pouches hanging on her belt.
I demand to know what Bimbette has put on my friend's face. She says it's her "just desserts" for not fitting the mold. That makes me really mad, and I draw my sword. I demand that Bimbette give the antidote, or I will cut her down.
We're no longer at a modern Renaissance Faire. It's darker, and there are more trees. The buildings are more solid, and the shop keepers look scared. There is no one around us who isn't dressed like us. Off to the side are three people imprisoned in stocks. Every so often, someone throws a rotten vegetable at them. Signs identify them as having offended the queen.
Bimbette vanishes with a poof, and I am left standing in the square with my sword drawn like an idiot. My friend's face has hives on it. I quickly grab her and take her to the nearest apothecary to see if the proprietor has anything to soothe her skin. Inside the shop, I find another friend of ours (whom we haven't seen in years) crushing dried herbs into a powder. We show him the reaction, and tell him how it happened. He immediately identifies the poison as the sting of the worker queen. He tells us the worker queen is an ordinary worker bee that thinks it's the queen bee of the hive. It lays eggs, steals royal jelly when the actual queen is not looking, and refuses to do any work even though it really is just a worker bee. It will protect the hive if attacked, and its poison is a very potent irritant because of its diet. He says he can temporarily fix the damage, but we need to go get a special root in order for him to make the antidote.
My friend's daughter is in tears at this point. She thinks that the slap is her fault, because she was the one who wanted to go to the toy shop. Her brother and my son are trying to make her feel better by clowning around to make her laugh, but they're too close to a bunch of glass jars full of ingredients, and we're afraid they're going to knock stuff over. We both tell them we know they mean well, but there are too many breakables, and to cut it out, and they stop. My friend puts her arms around her daughter, looks her in the eyes, and says "This is not your fault."
Immediately, Bimbette's disembodied voice fills the room. "One strike! Unequal treatment! Unfair!"
My friend's hives turn into boils, until I yell, "Bullshit!" Then, they go back to being hives. It feels like Bimbette just cast a spell, and I just cast the counterspell to it.
The chemist mixes up a cream. In it, he puts some powder from a few different jars. I can't read the writing on most of them, but I notice that one says "honesty" on it. I get the mental image of a plant that looks just like a violet, except the petals are white. He whispers over the cream as he stirs in the powders, then asks if he can have one of the daughter's tears. My friend pulls the child to her protectively, but the girl says ok, if it will help Mommy. She leans forward, and the chemist uses the bowl to wipe a tear from her cheek. He mixes that into the cream and then tells my friend to rub some onto the affected area. My friend doesn't want to put her daughter's tears on her face until the girl says, "No, Mommy, those aren't bad tears. Those are tears of responsibility. I can take responsibility even if it's not my fault." The girl then takes a finger, rubs the cream on her mother's face, and then both kids kiss where the hives are. The hives shrink down, leaving just the original bright red hand print.
The chemist smiles, and says "You are almost right. Those are tears of epiphany. You had an epiphany when you realized that responsibility and fault are not the same thing. Your epiphany helps, and the kisses helped even more." Then he looks at my friend and says "This won't completely get rid of the poison. It will only slow it down. If you don't have an antidote, the hives will come back. You need your own cure."
Then to me, he says, "Find this flower," and shows me a picture of a tall, leafy plant with big, floppy orange flower petals. It looks like a super-sized lily. "The roots of the plant grow down into the ground, put shoots up a few feet away from the central stalk. Those shoots are roots, too. You need to collect one of those and bring it back to me." He nods at my friend. "She has to harvest it, but she needs a protector. The woods are dangerous."
It is time for us to meet the guys. We decide that it won't be safe for the kids to come into the woods with us, so when we get to our meeting spot, we quickly explain the situation and ask if they mind us going. The guys agree that the woods would be an unsafe place for us to take the kids, especially since we would be distracted from them by our mission. They decide to take them to the toy shop where we were originally headed, while we go find that root. From behind us, we hear, "Strike two! Dumping the kids off on your husband!" We turn, and there is Bimbette.
Even though I am leaving my son with my husband, and the decision was basically by committee, she is only looking at my friend. My friend shouts back at her, "What would you have me do, risk their lives in the woods where there are wild animals? That's just stupid!" Bimbette doesn't answer, but instead throws a dart (like you would throw at a dart board in a bar, but bigger) at my friend. I use my sword like a baseball bat to deflect it back at her. It sticks in her arm. Again, I demand the antidote, but she throws a glass ball on the ground and disappears in a puff of smoke.
We kiss our husbands and kids goodbye and head toward the city gate.
* * * * * *
We are on a thin dirt pathway in an area so heavily wooded that it is dark as twilight, even though it's the middle of the day. I have my sword drawn, and am looking around. We've been walking on this path for a bit, and it feels like something is following us. We're looking for the plant the chemist told us to find. We've seen a lot of other plants, but none with the flower he showed us. Mostly we are running into ivy plants and bushes.
We hear movement in the underbrush close to the path behind us, several yards back. I turn toward the sound and speak to whatever is in that direction. "We know you are there. You might as well just come out." When nothing does, we decide it must be an animal, and we cautiously walk on for several feet. I keep hearing the movement, always the same distance behind us. Finally, I decide to go back and check. There are paw prints in the dirt off the side of the path, but they look old. The dirt is dry, but the prints look like they were made when it was muddy.
We turn to leave, when a huge cat jumps out at us. It isn't a regular big cat, like a mountain lion or anything. It looks more like a giant house cat. It is gray with white splotches and short hair, and it's wearing a pink collar. I knock my friend to the ground and roll us out from under the cat's paws, then slash at it with my sword, slicing open its nose. The cat growls at us loudly, then meows. It sounds like a normal house cat, only a lot louder. I shout at it to scat, and it hisses. I grab my shield and hand it to my friend. The cat pats at us with a paw, claws extended. My friend smacks the shield into the paw, as I jab at it from the side. The cat jumps back and hunkers down with its ears back. We move away up the path, facing the cat. Its tail is twitching, so we stop and set ourselves for the next attack.
When the cat pounces, I jab my sword all the way into the bottom of one paw, as my friend smacks its nose with the shield, really hard. At the same time, I notice there is a pendant on the collar. I recognize the pendant as belonging to Bimbette. The cat yowls and runs away. Looking in the direction it is running, we spot a flash of bright orange. We go through the pathway the cat has created through the underbrush, and find the flower we're looking for. Digging around, we find the roots sticking up out of the ground. I get a little knife out of the pack I have around my waist, and hand it to my friend. She cuts one root off at ground level. We empty a small bag of compost over the cut root so that it will have something to feed on as it grows back.
We return to the apothecary, where our families are waiting for us. The chemist takes the root and chops it into tiny pieces. These, he mashes into a paste, which he mixes with the cream from before. The mixture kind of melts into an odd blue liquid. The chemist pours it into a cup, hands it to my friend, and tells her to drink it. My friend's kids admonish her to drink every drop, because "you know how important medicine is, and we want you to be ok."
Bimbette appears in a flash, shouting "Strike three! Not being ok in front of your kids! Making them feel like they need to take care of you!" I see her and draw my sword. She reaches for the glass, but my friend holds it behind the shield. Bimbette yells "You can't have that! It's not yours! I didn't give you permission to feel better!" She tries to reach around the shield, and I cut off her arm. Instead of bleeding, the arm just melts into the floor, and the stump closes over with some kind of dark goo. My friend looks at Bimbette and says, "I don't need your permission." She drinks the blue liquid, and the red hand print on her face disappears.
We start talking about which show we're going to. Bimbette is livid, screaming that she's still there, and we have no right to ignore her. I tell her to can it, and we start to walk away. She throws another dart, but this time my friend just bats it away with the shield. I decide she should keep the shield in case Bimbette hasn't given up.
* * * * * * * *
We're back at the Ren, sitting in the audience in the mud pit waiting for the show to start. We've sat closer to the back to avoid getting too muddy. My friend has my shield strapped to her back. The first guy comes out onto the stage. I feel a sense of relief and happy anticipation.
This is where the dream ended. I went on to dream about something else, but I can't remember much about it, just something about a card game at my friend's house. It's something we do a lot, so that's kind of ordinary.
I'm pretty sure the dream is an indication that I want to find some way to negate the unmerited "slap in the face" that the person gave my friend. I know that the daughter would feel responsible for my friend's hurt if she knew about the attack, but it really isn't her fault. Recently, I've seen her demonstrate some maturity in understanding things about herself and about life, even though she's still just a kid, so that fits the dream, too. I see her trying to be a more responsible person, even though that's hard for her.
I'm mad enough to want to hit Bimbette (or whoever the guilty party is) back for what she did, or I wouldn't have dreamed about cutting off her arm. The attack really was very catty, so I guess that explains the feline attack. The cure in the woods, though, I think represented my feeling that my friend has to look within herself to find the answer. She knows that she is not what Bimbette (or whoever it was) called her. I know that she just needs to take ownership of her sense of self-worth, and not let someone damage it with such a cheap pot-shot.
Also, now I really want to go see the mud show at the Ren!
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