Sanddollar

No one really knows where Sanddollar came from. One day, a new hatchling appeared in the creche down one of the winding tunnels of the Clan of the Silver Pine's huge, warren-like den. He was small enough that he couldn't have been more than a day or two old, a little dragon with galaxies in his eyes and a strangely adult intensity in his gaze that belied his age.

Unlike the other dragonets, who all shot up in weight and height, Sanddollar remained the same. This puzzled the clan healer, Sandalwood, and his apprentice, Vulture, to no end. There was nothing apparent wrong with him, except that he seemed to be stuck, eternally, as a brand new dragon.

For a long time, he communicated solely with the trills and burbles of an infant dragon, one too young to have learned to speak. When he borrowed treasure and gems to stash in the little nest of shiny, shimmering silks he'd lined for himself, the older dragons didn't reprimand him. How could they reprimand a baby, one who didn't understand?

It was only when the second hatchling-who-was not, Seafoam, was discovered swearing like a sailor as she struggled with a rather large leech that attention turned back to Sanddollar. Understanding the game was up, he vanished into the depths of the den, cackling gleefully and trailing a length of green silk.

What are these hatchlings-who-are-not? Spirits? Dragons who ran afoul of magic? Something else?

No one in the Clan of the Silver Pine knows, but Sanddollar was the first of many little mischief makers to make their home in the Clan.