Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. But... where are its legs?

And look! It has gotten bigger and is now able to use magic. 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 hatchling is the bane of a royal gardener. She found the royal gardens to be beautiful and moved into the center of them.

The garden grows riotously wherever she wanders. The poor gardener is constantly following her tracks, trying to contain the overgrowth to keep the royal gardens orderly.

Occasionally Landscapayne will see the gardener pulling up some of the new growth she causes on the garden paths. Each time this happens, she protects the plants much like a mother duck protects her hatchlings. Fortunately for the gardener, she does not want to kill anything, so he survives the incidents. However, he has suffered a variety of injuries from being thrown across hedges into the garden fountains.

The gardener's assistant has had more luck in dealing with the hatchling. He leads her to sections of the garden where growth is needed—new plantings or dried out sections. Landscapayne loves to help those areas come to life more.