Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It must be very shy since it keeps hiding from you.

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.

Most people think Nickie is just another frozen hatchling when nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, Nickie is a fully grown adult dragon who's growth has been stunted because he started smoking cigarettes at an early age. Thinking it would make him look cool to all the other mint dragons Nickie started smoking only to become horribly addicted. As more and more hatchlings grew up in front of him all Nickie could do was sit by coughing and wondering why he didn't get any larger. Then one day after a really bad fit of coughing he went to a white dragon to see what was wrong only to be told that all the cigarettes had permanently stunted his growth. Nickie has long since given up smoking and now travels around warning young impressionable hatchlings the dangers of smoking.