When we were kids, my dad worked late and my mom would make dinner for us early (I assume because we were like my kids are now and STARVING by 5) but she'd then wait to eat her dinner with my dad when he came home.  So while we were eating, she would read us short stories, novels, or daily devotionals for kids.  It was during these times that my mom introduced us kids to The Chronicles of Narnia by C. S. Lewis.

The most vivid images I had during those stories were when she read The Voyage of the Dawn Treader and the story of Eustace, him being turned into a dragon and then the process of him shedding his dragon scales.  Of all the stories in all the Chronicles, that story has stuck with me the most over the years.

This image popped back into my head recently as I have been thinking about where I am at right now in a specific area.  I feel like Eustace and "I" have just begun to peel off the layers myself but it isn't working, so I'm about to lie down...

"'So I started scratching myself and my scales began coming off all over the place.  And then I scratched a little deeper and, instead of just scales coming off here and there, my whole skin started peeling off beautifully, like it does after an illness, or as if I was a banana.  In a minute or two I just steeped out of it. I could see it lying there beside me, looking rather nasty.  It was a most lovely feeling.  So I started to go down into the well for my bathe.

'But just as I was going to put my feet into the water I looked down and saw that they were all hard and rough and wrinkled and scaly just as they had been before.  Oh, that's all right, said I, it only means I had another smaller suit on underneath the first one, and I'll have to get out of it too.  So I scratched and tore again and this under skin peeled off beautifully and out I stepped and left it lying beside the other one and went down to the well for my bathe.

'Well, exactly the same things happened again.  And I thought to myself, oh dear, how ever many skins have I got to take off? For I was longing to bathe my leg. So I scratched away for the third time and got off a third skin, just like the two others, and stepped out of it.  But as soon as I looked at myself in the water I knew it had been no good.

'Then the lion said - but I don't know if it spoke - 'You will have to let me undress you.' I was afraid of his claws, I can tell you, but I was pretty nearly desperate now.  So I just lay flat down on my back to let him do it.

'The very first tear he made was so deep that I thought it had gone right into my heart.  And when he began pulling the skin off, it hurt worse than anything I've ever felt.  The only thing that made me able to bear it was just the pleasure of feeling the stuff peel off.  You know - if you've ever picked the scab of a sore place.  It hurts like billy - oh but it is such fun to see it coming away.'

'I know exactly what you mean,' said Edmund.

'Well, he peeled the beastly stuff right off - just as I thought I'd done it myself the other three times, only they hadn't hurt - and there it was lying on the grass; only ever so much thicker, and darker, and more knobbly-looking than the others had been.  And there was I as smooth and soft as a peeled switch and smaller than I had been.  Then he caught hold of me - I didn't like that much for I was very tender underneath now that I'd no skin on - and threw me into the water.  It smarted like anything but only for a moment, After that it became perfectly delicious and as soon as I started swimming and splashing I found that the pain had gone from my arm.  And then I saw why. I'd turned into a boy again. You'd think me simply phony if I told you how I felt about my own arms.  I know they've no muscle and are pretty mouldy compared with Caspian's, but I was so glad to see them.'"

pg. 108-110, The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, C.S. Lewis, Harper Collins Publishers 1952