Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. As soon as it hatched it headed to the sea.

And look! It lost its fins and grew wings instead. It must be close to maturing.

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.

Caslon hunts with a stick and a string, rather than "like a normal seawyrm", as the other adolescents say. He took a liking to his stick when he observed humans doing it and managed to acquire a miniature version of theirs. While most of his group catch tiny organisms for dinner, Caslon returns home with gross, wriggling things such as guppies and minnows, caught with his stringy stick. They take a couple of days to eat, and nobody ever wants to mooch or steal a piece from him.