I was a young inmate in an asylum, trying to get out. My escape depended on two creatures: a felt-covered bird and a felt-covered frog of the type that was sold as decorations or ornaments in the 1960s. I did not know how to use them, and when I found the frog on a desk I let it kiss the bird, which it devoured.

Somehow I was given another chance, this time with a frog, bird, and insect. My gut feeling was that the three animals were parts of a key, but my experience had shown that when they kissed (which I thought necessary), one would eat the other. I figured out that the frog would eat either the bird or the insect, the bird would eat the insect, the insect would eat neither, and in the back of my mind I wondered why the bird couldn’t eat the frog.

In the dream, the object seemed to be to keep all the animals “alive” or whole while getting them to interact, but when I woke up I realized that perhaps the devouring was part of the plan.

Before I awoke, the dream changed perspective. There was no longer a “me,” but there were three girls: one older, one younger, and one perhaps in between in age who had just arrived at the asylum.

Despite the massive size of the building, the individual cells were tiny for no clear reason. The young girl was lying in bed reading, the oldest one may have been standing and eating, and the new arrival was speaking of her disdain for their comforts, books, food, and chocolate. The two girls hastened to assure her that these things, small comforts for people under normal circumstances, would assume new importance to her in her new life after she had settled in. She was adamant that they would not.

The young girl, who was looking at a magazine, suddenly felt a doubt about her position. She could not remember what she had just read; when she re-read it, she realized that it was not worth remembering. The older girl seemed to experience a similar doubt about her own stand. Perhaps they were wrong after all.