This is a(nother) story I purchased from based on a random stray thought I had one day, out of nowhere, while sitting on the train.

For one or more unfortunate and tragic reason or reasons, we as organisms—human beings and animals alike—may suffer from the loss of one or more limbs in our lifetime. Sometimes it happens in our adult years, after a lifetime of using that limb and depending on it for our day to day function, sometimes it may be lost early in our lives, or sometimes it might grow incorrectly or not at all, due to an accident or a birth defect. Regardless, as a species, those afflicted with this (often sudden) change are forced to adapt to a life without those limbs, or adjust to life with prosthetics of them.

But one afternoon in the middle of my ride, I wondered to myself arbitrarily: what if it were the complete opposite? What if you suddenly gained several limbs out of nowhere? Especially if it were at a later stage in life? What kind of mental and physical (and hell, even cultural) shock would that be? And I don't think there's a better example of that out there than a Dragonair evolving into a Dragonite. Think about it. Dratini and Dragonair are limbless serpents; water noodles. And when they reach their adult form, they turn into THAT! Seriously, put that to your minds for a moment.

Most creatures, like you and me, slowly learn how to use our extremities as we grow from birth and infancy and build our muscles and memory through them all our youth, and hone our skills for them all our lives. Think of how jarring it must be to go your whole young and adolescent life, reach adulthood and suddenly go from having zero limbs to having NINE, if you count the antennae at the top of the adorable little head(or ten, if you're a male Dragonite 😈). Zero to nine limbs, with absolutely NO idea, knowledge, or muscle memory on ANY of them, at the supposed PEAK of your growth. It's crazy.

So, I asked Jeeves to do a clean(gasp!) story about how a Dragonair/ite might feel about that. And what he came up with was both beautiful and realistic. It even touched my heart deeply. I regret that it took me so long to share this story with all of you, but trust me, this link is going EVERYWHERE!

I hope you all enjoy Dragonite's First Day, and special thanks to Jeeves for his limitless imagination and immense writing skills. 🥰