User blog comment:FairyRaven/Fairy Tail Chapter 337: The Golden Plains, Review and Commentary/@comment-7418318-20130628095037/@comment-7418318-20130628100932

Oh that one. Maybe that's how he looks when he "switches off" his flames, or Atlas Flames tales inspired that Dragon to argue for the Humans.

Or it's going to be a retcon, because at that point Mashima hadn't yet thought of the idea of making a Dragon enveloped by flames all the time.

Or that Dragon could just be a generic fill-in of how the listeners imagined the scene, rather than how Zirconis remembered it.