Hey - I had a pretty weird dream last night, it's a bit long but I was wondering what it meant.

It started in a tower – as in an old-fashioned, probably should be attached to a castle tower made of sandstone – that had been modified into a skyscraper. Underneath was a huge hall, modern in a sort of warehousey way, that was home to a technology expo with a section for future entertainments, which was where they showed short immersive films to introduce characters and worlds in the feature-length movies that would be in the cinemas over the next few years. I ended up down there a couple of times to meet up with people.

A man was looking for me, but I wasn’t supposed to let him know I was there – I felt it was like the Cinderella story, only in this story Cinderella was supposed to lead the prince somewhere rather than fall in love with him. I kept on going up the stairs and sometimes went down the elevator to make sure he didn’t catch me or realise that I was leading him somewhere. Eventually we ended up at the top and I left him there to go home.

I went to a friend of a friends’ house instead, and there was a tank with several unique fish and a kind of fish-tortoise hybrid thing that was black with very white teeth and very red eyes, a few delicate and colourful fish, and a massive lizard thing that I mistook for a rock decoration at first. Eventually the boys who lived in the house and my friend left me with the fishes whilst they went off to do something, and the weird fish ate a little yellow one – obviously, I couldn’t stop it. When the owner of the fish came back, I told him what had happened and he told me that was obvious, the fish had also killed the massive lizard and left it bleeding on the floor. I had no idea where the fish was and I was pretty much terrified. I went home.

All through this, there had been a butcher boy who was a bit of a wimp who wanted to help keep an eye on me but couldn’t because he was stuck in the shop while his father, the owner, was there. He phoned me and told me to switch on the TV.

There was a blip, and I was watching a massive dark shoal of fish under the surface of the ocean. It would have been scary, but there was a huge and incredibly advanced battleship that I was assured would take care of it. It allowed the shoal to surround it, then released several bombs, and at first it seemed obvious that they had been destroyed, but they just reformed and carried on towards land.

There was another threat – there were these strange beetles that were approaching too. People were fairly certain that the fish would just die on land, so as long as we stayed out of the water we would be fine, but these beetles looked like nothing we had ever seen before and we had no clue how to deal with them. Over the radio, we were told by government that they weren’t harmful, but that it was a civic duty to catch the unusual beetles and send them in, and that it was a good idea not to let them into homes.

Two flew my house – specifically my bedroom – before I closed the windows: one shaped like a heart, and one shaped like a circular shield. I had the passing thought that they were like jewels. I had a sort of detached fascination towards them, but I would have been more than willing to squish them when they flew. Then I woke up.

I'm a twenty-two year old woman who has just finished university and is starting on a career; right now, I'm doing temp jobs until the graduate scheme I want opens for applications. I'm also a writer. There's no upheaval in my family life, and I don't have a boyfriend or partner. Can anyone tell me what this means?