Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It likes to play in small piles of sand.

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.

Hirame's name means "flounder."  He suffered an unfortunate injury when he was very young which left him with a broken wing.  He would have been permanently beached, save that the dolphin pods, carefully cultivated by Iruka, began carrying him out to sea in an effort to help him heal and grow stronger.  The swimming exercise proved beneficial as the wing knitted whole again, and now he can fly as well as any other.  He's begun to join Iruka and Kinai in their aerial patrols of their territory, and he always remembers his duty to the dolphins.