Hi Frozen,

Circles symbolize the feminine, whereas angular objects symbolize the masculine. Your pool is feminine. Your chests, if they are standard rectangular shapes, are masculine. This seems to me to be a reference to your dreamtime, maybe to your efforts with lucid dreaming, and to intuitive/emotional aspects you experience during dreams. The dream is allowing you to go deeper into the pool, probably the Collective Unconscious here, but only one level deeper, as the key to the other chest is not available, suggesting you still have some intellectual (masculine attribute) studying to do before you can learn to go deeper.

Caves in my dreams often represent the Earth plane. I was once told in a dream that "children (that's all of us) are not allowed in the cave unescorted." In other words, we have guides and angels with us to help us, as I further discovered in my dreams. Native Americans also perceive some of their guides as animal spirits, so it could be they are there as helpers, or it could be that your going deeper is part of taming your own animal nature, leaving it behind as you go down to the depths of understanding your own true nature and the nature of Spirit or God/dess.

You might look the specific animals you remember up here: <http://www.sayahda.com/cyc1.html>. The site is based in great part on Ted Andrews' work in his AnimalSpeak book.

One of the things my spirit guide, Leslie, wants me to always be aware of is that he is HUMAN, not an animal. He stressed that a lot when I first became aware of his presence in my life. It may be that the thing you need is to understand that, and the other chest may lead to your own inner guides.

All best!