Truffle

Name: Truffle

Species: Unknown, she has never seen another of her kind

Gender: Female

Age: 5 dragon years old, 20 in human years

Sexuality: Demi Lesbian

Pronouns: She/Her/Hers

Likes: Mushrooms, taking care of other creatures (especially her friends)

Dislikes: Snails (will eat them if she finds them on her and her mushrooms, even though she hates the taste. She feels they deserve it), being alone for long periods of time

Personality: Truffle is a very kind, bubbly and sweet dragon with a childlike innocence, and an optimistic attitude about the world. She trusts others very easily, and is always willing to help other people out. However, when she gets sad or upset, she tends to stay in that depressive state for hours or even days. 

Biology:

-The green scales on her body have a moss-like quality to them, which allows mushrooms spores to land and take hold. They didn’t develop fully until she was 6th months old in dragon years. These mushrooms are photosynthetic, but they do take a small amount of nutrition from her body, so she makes sure to eat a healthy diet and spend an adequate amount of time in the sun. Her green scales are thick and spongy enough for mushroom roots take hold and grow while not causing damage to her scales or the skin underneath. She is able to feel where all the mushrooms are planted in her scales, and can determine when to harvest them, as her scales absorb the dead roots after the mushroom is removed from them. 

-The fur on her head and neck works to protect the mossy scales along her neck and face. It secretes a special oil that kills off spores or causes them to slide off, so that the spores cannot imbed in the thinner green scales on her face and cause permanent damage to the skin and nerves beneath them. Some spores manage to gain access to her neck, but she usually harvests those before they have a chance to grow their roots very far. 

-The horn on the tip of her nose is used for digging up mushrooms that she finds on the forest floor and it is also extremely sensitive to mushroom spores. With it she is able to determine if a mushroom is close to or releasing its spores, and she can gather some on it to plant in the scales along her shoulders and legs. When growing mushrooms on other parts of her body, she rubs the mushroom-free areas against the mushroom releasing spores in order to gather them and let them grow. Her nose is also fairly sensitive, so she is excellent at tracking down specific scents once she knows them.

Backstory:

   Truffle hatched in a nest by herself, surrounded by broken eggs and rotted leaves. She stayed there for a few days consuming her egg shell, and then the egg shells that surrounded her until she ran out and she ventured away from the nest, hungry and searching for comfort. She tried to join a few nests of other creatures, but was always chased away. She managed to sustain herself on the fruits and roots that she saw other creatures eating, and managed to hide from large predators. As she grew older, she taught herself how to speak by listening in on conversations from dragons she was too scared to approach, discovered the special properties of her body, and also began teaching herself about the different mushrooms that resided in the forest she called home. She named herself Truffle after discovering the curious, shroom-like morsel.

    Truffle spent the first year and a half of her life by herself before she ran into a dragon lost in a field, and made her first friend ever after helping her find her way to the road. She went with her to the village she had seen and steered clear of, and quickly found a place there. She learned potion-making from a botanist that lived there, and spent the next 2 years of her life learning and perfecting the art of making potions as well as learning even more about the mushrooms that could grow on her body. However, despite being surrounded by dragons of all species and seeing many more pass through, Truffle had yet to see a dragon like her, and believes she is the last of her kind. During her third year living in the village, she decided to leave and build a cottage in a large tree a few miles away, wanting to be surrounded by nothing but nature once again while still being able to visit her friends, as spending the first year of her life scared and alone made it so she hated being alone for longer than two days. 

    Truffle is known a forest witch now that travels the forest gathering mushrooms and helping sick or starving animals and dragons that she finds. Often times, she’ll lead the dragons to the village so they can properly rest and heal before they head on their way. She sells potions out of her little house in the forest, and always carries a couple in the belt along her neck. She has a map of the entire forest hanging in her house, and always knows where she is. Truffle does all of this while maintaining her upbeat, cheerful, childlike personality, and most would believe she is younger than she actually is. 

Fun facts:

- Truffle is a vegetarian, eating fruits and vegetables only. It helps keep herself and her shrooms healthy

- Truffle is best friends with Faye, the dragon that she helped in the forest on that day years ago

- Truffle has a fear of being alone for too long, and will begin to panic or break down if she is left alone for longer than a few days. She knows this and periodically returns to the village every couple of days.

- Truffle hates snails with a PASSION. She can deal with other creatures that want to eat her mushrooms easily, but has always had a hard time getting rid of snails. She has had to pull full patches of otherwise healthy mushrooms from her scales simply because snails had found their way into them. Now she just resorts to eating them if she sees them, despite the fact that she hates the taste. 

-The mushroom in her horn found its way there after she fell and cracked it when she was around a year old. The mushroom doesn’t harm her or her horn in any way, and somehow has managed to stay alive her whole life, so she just leaves it. She does check periodically for infection or decay of her horn, and has someone she can go to in order to remove it safely if it ever does become infected or starts to cause rot in her horn.

- She still hopes that maybe she can find other dragons of her species one day, and wants to return to the nest where she hatched in order to find clues, but has yet to find it due to her leaving it when she was just a hatchling.