Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon... except for the tangle of dangerous-looking vines surrounding it...

Now there are even more vines. Perhaps something is happening?

Young dragons are relatively defenseless. They are born with relatively soft scales, which are shed and replaced with harder ones as the hatchling matures. Once a hatchling’s wings grow in, it typically marks the beginning of maturation. At this point they are often capable of hunting on their own and are usually left alone by their mother.

The otherwise dry and dead clifftop rock very suddenly gives way to something more like very fine gravel, which bears an amazing proliferation of greenery. As you stand amid this very odd garden, you notice a pair of eyes glaring at you. You feel something writhe under your foot, and when you lift it, you see a bumpy vine slide through the gravel rapidly, vanishing into the tangle of brush surrounding the eyes. The tangle suddenly slides outwards, like a giant cage, and you can see... Is that a -dragon!- It is! A tiny, dark green vine dragon, a female, the smallest you've ever seen, lays on the ground under her vine cage and hisses at you. You can see she's dug a hole in front of her, and there seems to be a half-buried, half-eaten carcass. Similar mounds, you now notice, dot the garden. So this is how it survives up here.. As you watch, she shoots out a vine and spears a bird on the wing. Another to feed the garden.