Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It seems to enjoy sunbathing.

And look! It has grown much bigger! 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.

This dragon has gained a rather fearsome reputation, but through no fault of her own. A happy young creature, she can often be seen bounding through the forest, resembling very much a male deer with her branching antlers and slim body. Except for, of course, the fact that she's green.

Local human peasants catching sight of her are apt to shriek and run home screaming that the plague is coming and has already set the very deer in the forest to turning rot-green. This has led to the panicked evacuation of more than one settlement on the edges of her forest home. Whoops!