What Awoke in That Sleep?

My earliest remembered nightmare:

I was just a boy and the world was still haunted.  With new eyes I marveled over a particle of dust as it caught the morning light.  Such curious imperfection of air, figment more fairy-like than dead skin, to slip into my dreams, anxiously. 

   

There then appeared a lumberjack hefting an ax high above his head eager to cleave in half that Elysian speck.  I cowered in a corner too afraid to stop him but too afraid also of what it meant.  The fear of trying or maybe disturbing what rightfully existed, whole, even in something so minuscule.  It could feel pain, why not?  In a world of pet rocks and talking cartoon animals. The fear of violence and the suspicion that everything has a place in the universe and ought to be protected.

Why do I remember this (proto-)nightmare while countless others fade?  What awoke in that sleep?

A holistic view, a naïve view, a view closer to the beginning.