My name sake was a brave, magnificent, mystical, and iridescent dragon of our history in her day. The clan I am grumbling about having to go back into hiding after 5,000 years is the Shimmer Clan. We dragons consist of probably about 12 Clans, well what's left of us that is. Some that were around when I was a hatchling have already ceased to exist, and they were the few of the original clans that were left. They all died due to the Dragon Plague, Dragon Flu, Dragon Fever, and the Dragon Pox. What illnesses didn't kill my kind the natural disasters like floods; fires; drought; famine; or humans killed them all.
Now all the clans are much smaller than they once were in the past, maybe with a total of 20 - 30 clansman's not counting the hatchlings that have yet to reach adulthood at the age of 24. When we reach the age of 24 we are an adult since that is when our dragons are fully mature and we can fully control our emotions. Unfortunately many of our problems started when we came out of hiding and let the world know that Dragon shifters still existed. They always knew that werewolves and vampires were more than myths and legends, but they never knew that the stories that they were told about shifters weren't true.
They are told that the myths about Mermaids, bird shifters, shark shifters, bear shifters, all the different feline shifters, the sirens, harpies, fairies, phoenixes and all the other shifters are true, so they are just that…myths. None of that is true though, they are all just as real as any of the humans. Actually I think that some of them are more real than the humans because all of us shifters try to be very clear and upfront about what we want.
The original clans we had before our population shrunk so much and we broke into smaller Clans since we thought it might be safer for our population are: Sky Clan, Forest Clan, River Clan, Arctic Clan, Beach Clan, and the Celestial Clan. At the center of it all and still to this day it remains in the center of all of our Clans no matter where they are located on the continent Enchantia, if you cross the ocean about 10,000 miles you will hit the continent of Topia that all the BigFoot Tribes live on. If you cross the landbridge it will bring you to the continent where the Gargoyle Clans live. Deep in the Lemon Ocean that borders the two continents is where the Mermaid kingdom is located.
I'm too young to know if they are called clans, tribes, or what they call their family units. This reason is that they haven't made contact with any of us above the surface since my name sake and 5x Great Granny was a fledgling. This is because the humans discovered that mermaid tears were pearls, hince valuable, that's when they started going missing, They blamed us on the surface minus the humans because it was one of them that told the Mermaid King and Queen that they seen us other clans and tribes with them being held captive. The truth of the matter is that the humans were catching the Mermaids, especially the young and selling them to the wizards to us in their spells. They also will take us dragons especially since our hide is so thick. They launch attacks on our clans so they can take the babies, raise them til they are old enough to be trapped in their dragon forms, and then skinned and killed. The Wizards then sell our hide as armor that they have enchanted.
They also will use our talons, scales, and hearts in their potions as well. Our hearts are where our element is, be it fire; ice; wind; or whatever our element is. They figured this out when an elder of the River Clan offered their heart so the Wizards would spare all the children in his clan at the time. It worked but only for about a few thousand years or so. Long enough for all the elder wizards to die or whatever it is they do when they disappear. That left only the younger members of their families left to continue to make spells, potions, and whatever else they do. I don't think that they wanted them to start the whole hunting us thing again, but that's what happens when left with basically no supervision.