home burned down and snakes

I was sitting on the ground beside a very shallow stream. I was facing the stream, my back to a dead-end area - a small open space flanked by rocks. I was aware that something seemingly catastrophic was about to happen, that a building or a place was about to die, to burn or some such thing, and that the hundreds and thousands of snakes that had inhabited the place needed to flee and that they would be travelling down the stream. I held a stick in one hand and waited for the snakes. They began to appear. First, hundreds of small sandy-coloured snakes swam downstream, following the course of the water. I brushed my stick across the ground at the shore, hoping the vibration would shepherd any stray snakes back into the water, so that they would pass safely by. The snakes doubled, then tripled in number and variety. Striped snakes, green snakes, pythons and more swam down the stream, travelling somewhere. I continued to brush and tap my stick on the shore until I noticed that there were simply too many snakes, that their perpetual writhing motion had caused a rivulet to form that branched off the stream and wound around into the dead-end space in which I sat. Some of the snakes continued to pass by in the larger stream, and some now followed the rivulet and became trapped in the cul-de-sac. I had to leave and the only way to go was up or down stream. I decided to go back to face the disaster, or whatever had occurred. I was grateful that I was wearing high black boots as I stepped into the stream. I waded up-stream, stepping with great trepidation but also a certain calmness, as the snakes passed by me. I was alert for poisonous snakes - brown snakes, red belly black snakes and more - but I did not see any. Most of the snakes appeared quite innocuous, and some were barely snakes at all, more like long leeches. Indeed, some of the leech-like creatures darted out of the water at my legs, most slipping off the wet, black suede of my boots. Again, I was grateful. As I climbed further up the hill, wading through the water, I passed increasingly frightening-looking snakes: huge black snakes with pronounced heads and flared nostrils, snakes with visible fangs and canny eyes. None, however, struck out or bit me. Finally, I reached the top of the hill and stepped out of the stream. I lifted my skirt to check for leeches and, sure enough, there were plenty, attached like barnacles to the area behind my knees and further up my thighs. I set about plucking each of them off, their long green bodies coming away but leaving their mouths still attached to my skin, which I then, with a little more difficulty, pulled off. Their must have been about fifty or more leeches, but, finally, I had removed them all. I looked around me and took in the nature of the disaster: I was standing outside the shell of my first school, which I also understood to be my family home, the place of my roots and my foundations, which had burned down. It was destroyed. I prepared to go inside and salvage what I could, if there was anything indeed that needed to be saved. I was not sure if I felt utterly devastated or greatly relieved, as though now, at last, I could enter a new phase of life. My phone rang. It was my brother, calling to check on me and to tell me that the only thing he wished he could have saved was his music. I told him that I was going in and that, if his music was still there, I would save it for him.