Aww... It’s a cute baby dragon. It has a large, shield-like object at the end of its tail that it uses for protection.

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.

Guarding the Cold, oddly enough, does exactly that. On one cold winter night in the cave that Lightningstreak and her dragons call home, GC (her nickname) went outside, brought in as much snow as the small shield on her tail can carry, dumped it as close to the fire as the snow could be without melting almost instantly, and put her body in between the snow and the fire. When asked why she did this, GC says that she wanted to keep a little bit of winter as her own. Luckily, with the help of either of Lightningstreak's winter dragons, GC keeps her pile of snow now in a small, dusky corner of the cave far away from sources of heat. They check on it once, twice, or three times a day, depending on the season, and the hatchling can proudly say that she has a nice, cold place to relax during the heat, and that she owns a bit of winter.