A "Lion" at Grandma's

I was at my grandparent's house standing in the living room waiting to go somewhere. Someone, either my mother or my grandmother, said there had been reports of a lion loose in the area, and we all needed to be extra careful going out anywhere. I then remembered seeing one walking up the street towards the now-defunct car tunnel under the railroad tracks. Then I remembered trying to look up more information online, but "lion in pa" only turned up results for MOUNTAIN lions. It occurred to me to do a search for AFRICAN lion in pa, but I didn't have access to a computer at the time.

Next, I was in their bathroom, getting ready to either go to work or school. My stomach felt a little ill and I had a notion to ask someone to call me off from school. Then I realized I was old enough to call myself off, and then it dawned on me I was going to work, and that I'd been out of school for quite some time. I started fixing my hair, wetting my fingers and coming them through it, trying to get it to look nice. My brother was standing next to me talking about something, but I don't remember exactly what. As I looked at myself in the mirror I found my hair was an ashen black, and was down to my shoulders in length. Furthermore, while I assumed the face was mine, in truth it didn't really look much like me at all. I remember the hair itself settled very nicely, and I bore the resemblance to a rugged action-hero type.

I had become irritated at someone or something, so I went out to the back yard to be by myself. As I was walking down the pavement towards the back gate, I heard a light splashing sound coming from the neighbor's yard to my left. Looking over, I saw what at first I thought was the lion that had been reported, only it was much smaller, younger looking, and was all white except for a bit of black from it's left shoulder all the way down to it's left forepaw, and black spots down its back. I studied it curiously, and wasn't quite sure if it was a tiger or leopard of some sort, or if it were instead a siberian husky, and subconsciously I must have decided it was something in-between. It looked at me with light-blue eyes and I started talking to it plainly, as you would to another person. I think I may have been more talking to myself, or perhaps for my own sake, as I felt a touch of nervousness.

The neighbor came out and starting talking about his "pet." It began to approach me in a friendly manor, and I felt myself smiling at the prospect of making friends with it. Then the sentiment shifted to another creature, an ugly, alien thing with a narrow, pointed head, a large round body and skinny little arms. "You're a neat little Chimera," I said, to which the neighbor replied, "Yes, it's mostly wind," implying it's elemental attribute / composition. Suddenly my alarm went off, and I awoke with the smile still on my lips, though it faded rather quickly.