Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. Water behaves strangely around it, though the hatchling doesn’t seem to notice.

And look! It has grown wings! 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.

Andersen loves to make up stories as much as the next hatchling. With one big difference, all of her stories seem to end sadly. After years of suffering and great adventures, the hero dies right when he makes it back to his ladylove. A single moment of thoughtlessness of a hatchling demands terrible sacrifice and pain to compensate for the consequences. No matter how good or virtuous you are, the world will still punish you in the most terrible ways. The other hatchlings often cry when Andersen tells her stories but most still come back for more. However morbid her stories are, she tells them beautifully.