Old dream: Lost little girl

Anyway, as the title suggests, the dream I'm about to relay is one I will never forget because of the effect it had on me. It basically haunted me the day after, and much of that week. This was about 3 years ago, but such was the dream's effect, that I still wonder about it to this day.

As I recall, it began with me standing in a dense forest. Shafts of light were shining in from the trees and the ground was covered with a thick moss. The next thing I remember hearing was a child crying, and I turned to see a little blonde girl of about 7 or 8 years old sitting on the ground. She was wearing a magenta coloured dress that looked a bit grubby. She was also barefoot and had a large bloody graze on one leg. She was facing away from me, so all I could see was her hair. I approached and asked if she was OK and where her parents were. She then told me that her parents had gone missing and she was all alone.

Now, for some reason I felt strongly attached to this poor child. It's really hard to describe, but I almost felt responsible for her, and was genuinely moved by her sadness. In that dream, I was determined to do anything to help this young girl, almost as though she was part of me. I also felt as though in our current predicament, we needed each other; I offered to carry her to safety so we could escape the forest together because I, like her was also lost. I then picked her up and carried because she was injured and couldn't walk properly. I carried her a little way in my arms and then woke up.

Like I said earlier, this dream stayed with me after I'd woken up. For some reason, I could not get the girl's crying out of my head, it literally tugged at my heartstrings whenever I recalled it. Neither could I forget the overwhelming sense of love and compassion I had towards this strange girl to whom I was in no way related, but to whom I still felt conneected. Also, dreams being what they are, I can offer no explanation as to where she came from in the first place or how she came to be sat on the ground behind me, but there you go.

UPDATE: This may be a very old dream, but I have never forgotten it, and with hindsight, I believe I have discovered its meaning. When I had this dream, I was nearing the end of a stillborn relationship. In truth, it's a relationship I never should have pursued as I was emotionally fragile at the time anyway. I believe the crying little girl was a metaphor for my fragile emotional state at the time; I was still hurting and not really in any position for a relationship, and the dream used the girl's genuinely heartrending distress to show me the state I was really in. By picking up the child and carrying her, it was trying to show me that I should reconcile with myself.