Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It occasionally shoots small puffs of smoke from its nose, like it’s trying to breathe fire.

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.

That Red, or "Fire" Dragons, can freeze at all is surprising. And Palovana was very surprised indeed that falling asleep in the Ice Dragon's cave turned out to be a stupid idea. After crying for hours (crying frozen tears, of course), the others were finally able to come up with a small consolation for the little dragon that would never grow up. They gave it a name that means "inner fire" and told a wonderful story about needing someone for the very important task to guard the fire by watching all the tiny little sparks and making sure that none of them get lost. Of course you have to be small to do that job! And so Palovana was contented.