Bird
an excerpt

It couldn’t be anyone else. Loper moved closer. The female on the rover was quite striking. While some of her scales had the more typical dull copper shade of the southern steppes, most of them were a bright red. If she came out of her egg looking like that, it was no wonder where her warder thought of her name. Some scales were prematurely flecked with yellow. They looked like sparks and only enhance the overall effect.

The female on the rover was also quite asleep, to Loper’s bemusement. She was curled up tight, haunches drawn up to the chest and the tail wrapped around until the tip almost touched her snout. The canopy she lay on was covered with marks that looked a lot like claw scratches, suggesting this wasn’t an unusual perching spot for Burning.