Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. Its skin is smooth and doesn’t seem to have any color to it.

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.

Emerels the Blind was an intelligent hatchling with very blurry sight. As he matured, his sight grew worse before fading entirely. Taika Eryll always poked fun at him, often going into great detail about a pretty sunrise, or sometimes trying to trip him. Emerels grew more upset as he remembered how beautiful the world was, and how he had taken it for granted. Finally, he begged EchoSong to try to cure his sight. She agreed, but not only did her spell fail, it stopped time from passing on Emerels, so he would remain a hatchling forever.

Although he was grumpy about this at first, he likes his life much more this way, as he can always play with other hatchlings without worrying about what the other dragons think, as well as use his intelligence to solve the most complex of problems. Sometimes, however, a dragon will wake up and find Emerels staring at a sunrise he can't see...