Modern Monsters 9: Lesser Dragon (Dragonet)
The modern world has very little space for giant monsters to roam the land.
If any of the large sapient lizards - the greater elemental dragons, fire and ice drakes, wyverns, wyrms, or any others you can think of - still live today, they certainly don’t venture far from their inhospitable hiding places. Human settlements have encroached too far into the wild edges of the lands. Even the skies and seas are not entirely untouched.
However, just as the more widely-known living fossils like coelacanths and tuataras continue to survive, if one knows where to look, there still remain small populations of dragonets scattered across the globe. They have adapted through necessity to living on the quieter edges where human influence, though undeniably present, begins to fade into wilderness.
Like their larger relatives, these small creatures are sapient and have some influence over the elements. However, these lesser dragons branched off quite some time ago from their more powerful and more intelligent giant cousins. Even the most unusually large dragonets are no bigger than a small domestic cat.
Consequently, their abilities don’t quite match up to dragons of medieval lore.
Dragonets have a level of intelligence roughly equivalent to a young human child.
They understand human languages well but may struggle to articulate themselves fully, given that inter-dragonet communication uses an intricate combination of scents, pheromones, scale colour changes, and elemental flares such as barely detectable atmospheric pressure changes alongside any vocalisations. As a result, they only have so much patience left for polishing up their grammar.
It’s really anyone’s guess whether it’s the brain equivalence to a small child or the genetic link to greater dragons that makes them so temperamental and so keen to hoard shiny things for themselves.
The different populations of dragonets have started diverging into subspecies at this point, with different types showing different elemental affinities.
The pictured specimen’s tendency to leave trails of frost lacing from its path may seem to imply that this type throw ice magic out into their environment, maybe because they love the cold. The fact of the matter is, the opposite is true - they just like to keep warm, and their bodies absorb heat from around them to such an extreme degree that they drop the temperature of everything around them. They are far less snappy and more energetic in the summer when their bodies don’t have to work so hard to maintain their preferred high core temperature.
More than one shrewd hedgewitch has picked up on this, over the years.
The promise of a warm fireside for the winter, along with all the cat food pouches they can eat, has been quite effective in convincing frost dragonets to form a partnership of sorts.
They still need to be treated with respect, and they must have free access to the outdoors, of course; draconians of any size cannot tolerate captivity. However, they can bond with the right sort of humans, and those that do so quickly learn that they rather enjoy a ride in a shirt pocket or on a shoulder when offered.
It is also well-known among such favoured witches that dragonets are surprisingly good with their children, particularly their little girls.
A lesser dragon is still a dragon, after all.
And dragons do so love a princess.
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This time around the picture came first. I just really love dragons, and wanted to dream up a way a pocket-sized one could exist. Once I saw its face, I knew I wasn’t going terribly verbose on the poem this time.
It doesn’t often talk to humans, but it’s trying its best.
I’ve also seen “dragonet” sometimes used to refer to baby dragons, so let me be absolutely clear that yes, I’m using that here as a separate species name, and this is a full-grown adult one ready to fight you for that shiny bottle cap.
I love bearded dragons, so I went straight to that as my baseline for the picture. Which I dedicated far too much time to, as usual, but hey, I’m pretty happy with this one.
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Modern Monsters series
Modern Monsters 1: Dullahan
Modern Monsters 2: Kelpie
Modern Monsters 3: Kuchisake-onna
Modern Monsters 4: Cuca
Modern Monsters 5: Vampire
Modern Monsters 6: Dr Frankenstein
Modern Monsters 7: Frankenstein’s Monster
Modern Monsters bonus: Frankenstein, Monster (it’ll come some day I swear)
Modern Monsters 8: The Scissorman
Modern Monsters 9: Lesser Dragon (Dragonet)
