When Water Dragons mature, they lose the ability to survive on land, entering the water permanently. They are adept swimmers and eat whatever fish are in the lake they live in. They tend to inhabit the same lake for their entire lives, although a few live in the ocean and swim all over the world.

Dragons are highly-intelligent reptilian creatures that—from a human perspective, at least—appear to live forever. Many different varieties of dragon exist, each with their own unique qualities, habitats, and behavior. Adolescence in dragons is usually marked by the growth of a hatchling’s wings, although not all breeds of dragons grow wings and some breeds have other traits that indicate the beginning of maturation. In Galsreim, dragons and humans coexist peacefully.

Uisga was found by the human Mirhana as an egg, washed up on a riverbank. The young woman took the egg home to her cottage. Recognising it to be the egg of a Water dragon, she kept it in a bucket of warm water near the hearth, waiting for it to hatch. When Uisga hatched, she happily crawled all over the floor imitating the other hatchlings, but being built for water instead of land this looked rather ungraceful. Still she kept the hatchling indoors, giving it the occasional swim in the rain barrel outside. Soon however Uisga had outgrown her barrel, and Mirhana's cottage as well—then Mirhana brought Uisga to the seaside, where she soon matured.  

The coastline is her home now, where she roams free and wide, but she often swims up the river to visit her owner as well as her mate, the Magi Uibhir. Then she returns to sea with the water-dwelling hatchlings Mirhana has been raising and guides them to adulthood.