Flamingo Wyverns are so named for their resemblance to the tropical birds with whom they often share territory. Their most striking feature is the bony black crest over their faces and snouts, larger in males, aiding both in digging up food and protection when fighting for mates. Males are duller in color than females due to their habit of wandering from nest to nest and picking from less algae-rich feeding grounds.

Dragons are highly-intelligent reptilian creatures that—from a human perspective, at least—appear to live forever. Many different varieties of dragon exist, each with their own unique qualities, habitats, and behavior. Adolescence in dragons is usually marked by the growth of a hatchling’s wings, although not all breeds of dragons grow wings and some breeds have other traits that indicate the beginning of maturation. In Galsreim, dragons and humans coexist peacefully.

Mears can write legibly, and he's very proud of that. He must use his mouth to hold the writing tool, and many dragons are amazed he never gave up. It took about a year to transform inky scribbles into tidy squares and right-angle lines, and although a very slow writer, his "handwriting" is now prettier than most others'. Mears writes for fun, and the pieces he produces are not time-sensitive. Many of them are children's stories, and the hatchlings have learned to wait patiently for him to write it all down, since he insists on written, not oral, storytelling. If another dragon approaches Mears too suddenly and quietly, he jumps and smacks the perpetrator in a flurry of limbs and then looks very sorry. He looks even more sorry if his reaction damaged his work. Others feel bad watching him bawl over his ruined sheets, but they know fixing them for him is "just not the same", so one of the magically adept enters to turn back time a little bit for him so the incident never happened.