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.

Poor dear. This dragon got it all wrong, and he was so keen and eager to be as dragon-ish as possible! At first, everything had seemed to go so well. He found a nice shady cave high up in the mountains where he was protected from direct sunlight and which was only accessible by air. Then he set fire to some unused barns in the valley and abducted a princess—and then he remembered that he didn't know what to do next, as he always fell asleep at around this point into the bedtime story (it seemed to him, though, that princesses were not supposed to coo and fuss over the dragon who captured them). Upon inquiry, everyone's answer as to how these stories end was "with a wedding". Especially the princess insisted that there was no other outcome possible. Well, that was a disappointment, but he certainly wasn't having any of it! So he froze himself to avoid growing up, because girls (especially princesses) are icky and he was NOT going to marry one.