What's the Qilin Beast and what does It Want?

In April 2007, I had a dream of something that looks like the animal depicted in this image:

St. George and Dragon

In the dream, I was standing near a sandy beach and this "thing" was on the beach itself with a small man riding its back. Its face was black, very black, its skin was scaly, like a fish, and multi-colored, it had a large tail, like a whale and, from my own estimation, it was very powerful. I stood face to face with the beast for a moment measuring it trying to understand it's nature. In the dream, I remember thinking, "it will take me a long time to kill this thing." I also remember thinking, "I've seen this thing before, but where??"

Later on in the dream, I was sitting upon a bluff overlooking the beach down below. I was relaxing on a settee, with a highly sexual woman. But I was still concerned about the animal on the beach. I asked my partner, "what is that thing?" I'd seen it before, but I can't remember where and I never get a chance to really identify it. She replies, "that's just Pylon", in a manner suggesting it was of no major concern. I think she considered it her pet. I respond to her, "well if it comes up here, I am going to kill it." I last saw it as it bounded away powerfully, barely touching the ground and covering a great distance in each stride.

After waking up, I couldn't stop thinking about "Pylon". I asked myself, "is it possible to have dreams about things that do not exist?" I did searches for unique dogs, as I thought it was a type of Dog and my memories of seeing this thing somewhere included in a Dog encyclopedia. I didn't find it.

About a week later, I started searching variations of the name I heard in the dream. I was obsessed with finding this thing. I figured I heard her wrong. I checked variations of what I thought I heard and finally found something called a Qilin. As seen here:

Qilin

The point of this post is to establish an identity for this mystery Beast, does anyone know what it is, where it lives in the creation and what's its purpose? Both of my images refer to it as a type of Dragon, which is possible. Even though I have seen images of things that are called Dragons, I don't really know what one would look like.

Another problem this thread can touch on is this search started because of a Dream. This thing must exist at some level of reality. If for no other reason because the Georgians of the Caucus Mountains and the Ming of China both saw it too and included it in their art, which they then saved for thousands of years. How would you characterize its, the Qilin, reality in relation to our own.

From what I can tell that dream was an illusion. If it isn't well, I think it may be one view of, or the actual, *sigh* unicorn.

Looks more like a Nian, a Chinese mythical sea creature that comes out of the waves every year to terrorize villages. It is one of the guardians of hell and comes ashore to torment the wicked souls that are still bound to earth from their negative deeds during the Lunar new year. It's mate is the Kirin, a creature that lives in the air and is a celestial guardian for emporers and benevolent deities. The Kirin and the Nian are a balance of yin and yang.

The Nian dispisses the color red, therefor tradition in Chinese cultures to show displays of red and fire crackers to ward off this beast. Maybe the next time you see it, you can find something of red color and ward it off.