Female Hatchling
Name: unnamed
Species: Mottled Python
Birthday: Thursday, June 28, 2018
Owner: Lia
Element: Neutral 
A hatchling python fills its shell, and emerges hungry. The mother stays with the eggs, wrapped around them for protection and shivering to keep them warm, but she plays no part in rearing the young afterward. The little creatures are quite strong for their size, apt to wrap their coils around anything they come across, not to feed on it, but for support. They hunt using heat-sensitive pits on their upper jaw, and will lash out as an incoming rodent or shrew that isn't beyond their weight. The young snake then coils around its miniscule prey until the prey ceases to breathe, then the hatchling consumes it whole. They possess the ability to unhinge part of their jaws to allow them to swallow prey larger than their head, though they seldom take anything greater than the largest girth of their body. Larger distant relatives of the mottled python may grow many times longer than a man and consume prey as large as antelopes, but the mottled pythons themselves seldom pursue prey larger than a medium-sized rat.
It is not at all uncommon in Turril to see these small snakes coiled around a person’s upper arm or worn around the neck as a piece of living jewelry. Indeed, these snakes are so prized that a great number of color variants have arisen, indicating the animal’s lineage and by extension its worth. Wealthy Foenarans may keep several of these serpents at home, picking certain individuals of high breeding standard to wear for special occasions just as a Synaran might pick out cufflinks or earrings. By temperament, these pythons are quite gentle and perfectly content and capable of latching onto their owner’s arm and remaining there for the duration of a social dinner. They are calm around children and easy to feed on a diet of grassland mice and rats, provided they have a suitable hiding spot in which to sleep. The snakes grow no larger than three feet, most reaching barely two, with females growing slightly larger than males. They are perfectly harmless to humans, and are rarely known to bite unless placed under severe stress. The gift of a mottled python egg is a generous token in Foenara, especially when given to a foreigner.
Sprite art: Tekla (hatchling) | Description: PKGriffin