Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. As soon as it hatched it headed to the sea.

And look! It lost its fins and grew wings instead. 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 little hatchling, just recently having shed her fins, is struggling with learning how to fly. She swims up, using her wings to propel her through the water, but has a tendency to drag her wings in the water at the final leap.  Because of this, she usually does not get enough lift to keep flapping and stay airborne.

Flieslikeafish does make a big splash, however. Fishermen who see her trying to fly in the distance often mistake her for a leaping fish and bring their boats around to where she was. Once a fisherman managed to catch her in his net; that was bad for the hatchling, for the net, for the boat, and for the fisherman. When a boat approaches now, she heads for other waters.

Eventually Flieslikeafish may find that she can flap out of the water more easily from the shallows.