Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It spends a lot of time stalking and pouncing playfully on the tails of adult dragons nearby.

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.

Grubstake looks much the same now as he did last year, and the year before that, and before that. All of his peers are bigger, stronger, and smarter, and he is still tiny. He suspects it has something to do with his health; he has a lot of bodily traits, called conditioners, that nobody else has, such as short arms, low temperature, and rashes on his face and chest. When the medic examined him and remarked, "This is new" to his caretakers while furrowing her brows, Grubstake got excited because he likes new things, but his caretakers looked really worried. They later told him of a protective thing (magic, it sounds like) called In-Shore Ents, except this kind of magic is a little finicky and doesn't cover a lot of Pre-Eggs Sting Conditioners, which he has. His guardians are busy fixing the magic so it does cover, for which Grubstake is grateful, but he doesn't understand what all of that has to do with his small size and weakness. It sounds like they're trying to spare him bad news.