Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It is very brightly colored and enjoys splashing in puddles.

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.

Auq settled on a busy, rocky shoreline where many flightless waterfowl lived. She naturally dove and swam with them, sometimes racing them for one of the plentiful fish in the area. One day, she inadvertently got the bird competing against her in her mouth instead of the fish; subsequently she discovered that she really, really enjoyed the taste of the birds.

Over time, Auq decimated the bird population in the area. It has been a very long time since she last enjoyed a meal of her once-companions. Instead, she now lives on a lonely, bare stretch of rocky shoreline with only fish and mollusks to eat.