Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It’s very protective of other hatchlings.

And look! It has gotten 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.

Outgoing, talkative, sociable Swimmy Boy lives in a tunnel on the beach that floods at high tide. In her view, that's the middle point between land and water, which means the optimal spot for meeting water dwellers and land dwellers. She is often tasked with babysitting the young children and some adolescents who act like young children, and she's perfectly happy with that. Swimmy Boy spends an hour or two a day studying magic and just as long answering interruptions, getting called to take care of a dispute, rescue someone from drowning, or (most often) to do some impromptu socializing. She likes chitons of any kind and can spend up to a week chewing the girdles of some species. Other dragons have no issue ceding any they find to her, sometimes as payment for her work.