Shimmer-scale Dragons are a very beautiful breed with small—but highly reflective—scales that shimmer and shine as the dragon moves through water. They don’t have fins or webbed feet, but their long, eel-like bodies allow them to swim quite fast. They were once rumored to carry large pearls in their claws—causing many to seek them out in search of this fabulous treasure. In reality, the “pearl” is of greater value to the dragon, for the fabled treasure is actually an egg carried by a migrating female.

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.

She never understood why anything was; not her scales, not the water she swam in, not the skies or the ground she walked on. She only knew it as it was, but still questioned the world she lived in.

She asked her mother why the world seemed to be burning right before her eyes, but her mother was gone. Nowhere, when she needed her mother the most.

She gazed upon her nest in the forest that was now only a blaze, her only escape being the river. Nothing, it seemed, was right in the world.

She never could grasp why people and dragons both had fled from her. Her scales were still a pretty silver, with a large gash across her face and a horn missing that she never seemed to notice.

From then on, she quit looking up at the skies or down at the ground and water, and asking why. Because she knew, there wasn't a reason. Her days are now spent alone in a cave with an exit to a river with only a trickle of light from above.