For my own part, I have never had a thought which I could not set down in words with even more distinctness than that with which I conceived it. There is, however, a class of fancies of exquisite delicacy which are not thoughts, and to which as yet I have found it absolutely impossible to adapt to language. These fancies arise in the soul, alas how rarely. Only at epochs of most intense tranquillity, when the bodily and mental health are in perfection. And at those weird points of time, the confines of the waking world blend with the world of dreams. And so I captured this fancy, where all that we see, or seem, is but a dream within a dream.

-A dream within a dream, Alan Parsons Project.

“You’re eating mud again!” she cried. He shook his head fiercely. But he could not open his mouth to deny the charge, because his teeth were stained brown. She lay hold of his little arm and pulled him roughly to her. There were a lot of complaints, lately, about him the small gypsy village by the river—that he stole, and that he was rude, and the women were always telling her how wicked her boy was. She would always defend him, saying that every little boy in the crescent-shaped settlement was upto similar mischief. But she had misgivings now that she saw him eating mud again.

He could scarcely help being himself, could he? Like an ancient urge, his curse of being different burned inside him. And only the dark mud, the pure brown clods, cooled that terrible fever. So he ate the sweet-smelling stuff. Greedily. As if, if given a chance, he would devour the whole planet.

“Don’t you know it’ll upset your stomach? You could die eating mud,” she trilled, pulling him half angrily, though always lovingly, on to her lap.

She then inveigled a slender finger into his mouthm and then another, to try to to get him to open it. But he clamped his teeth down gently on her fingertips. Soon, with both of them giggling, the whole thing turned into a game, and she tried to use her other hand to unlock him at the cheeks. With a squeal, he cried, “So you must see it, mother? Then look!”