What Will the Flower Picker Finds in the Woods Today?: The Basket

[#63 What is your character's favorite item they like to carry with them? Why? Draw or write about your character with their item.]

Carrina is the flower picker. Naturally, she has a basket that she carries around with her wherever she goes, not only for her flowers but other belongings: books belonging to her or her friends, string, paper, pens, toadstools and stones and other interesting things she finds on her walks, and anything else she may need to carry or deliver. It means an awful lot to her, being tied to the thing she devotes the most of her time to, as well as a tool on which she relies on so much that she feels rather uneasy when she is without it.

Even when impulsively slipping out of the house one evening, after a disagreement with her mother, she makes sure to grab it by the leather strap her father had fastened to it. See, it's from home, the old country where Carrina was born, handwoven with bamboo and rattan by her and Jonasth's grandmother, about whom neither remember much. Traditional baskets don't usually have handles, and it was only when the basket was gifted to Carrina that the strap was added, to adapt to the culture of their new home.

It had been made for Carrina's mother. Carrina ponders this as she ventures into the trees; she imagines her mother, younger and softer, walking across the soft sandy beach, holding the basket under her arm, her footsteps matching Carrina's across the rough floor of the forest. The moon glimmers in their eyes, though it takes longer to reach Carrina's, as it is obscured by the trees above her. She picks goldenrods and asters as her mother scoops up handfuls of sand, letting it seep through her fingers to reveal seashells and sea glass sparkling and shining in the moonlight. Or maybe she preferred the day; Carrina does not favour it herself but she can imagine her mother smiling in the sunshine as she helps other workers pick bananas from the trees that looked nothing like those her daughter walks among tonight. The waves crash. Crickets sing. 

Never has Carrina known the beauty and the tranquility of the sea, and really she can only imagine what it's like from stories she's read and stories her parents have told her, yet she can see it so clearly, even feel it, when she holds this basket woven with materials that can only dream of seeing the north by merchants and travellers, by hands that have only known the rough summer of another world and not this chill autumn that the girl currently stands in.

She finds some of the plants Moth likes to use in his concoctions and spells and gathers them as well. It's usually Yuliss who runs out to find ingredients and components for him—Yuliss who uses a leather bag that was a gift from her parents—though Carrina knows that Moth always appreciates it from whomever is offering. She places them carefully into her basket and decides to call it a night, preparing in her head: "Look, Mama, I do collect useful things. These are for Moth, he'll use them in his work." She knows her mother will dismiss it and call Moth's work strange and dangerous like she always does, like everyone in town always does, but still, she imagines it anyways, as some imaginary comfort, some reassurance that she is right. 

Her fingers clasp around her father's leatherwork. Her grandmother's weaving—her mother's basket—bounces against her leg as she walks.