Willow

Willow is the oldest of 4, and she does her best to take on the mature caretaker role that everyone expects. She’s a chronic people pleaser and was it not for her more outspoken brother she’d easily end up being walked all over. She loves helping people and feeling useful, so she goes out of her way to get involved with community events. Willow doesn’t see herself as anything special, and she sees herself as remarkably average in every possible way. Because of this she tends to be drawn towards people who seem extraordinary to her, but she also struggles with feelings of insecurity and feeling like she can’t measure up. 

She’s always had the same friends as her brother Aspen and the two of them have always been seen as a single unit in social circles. She’s never had an issue with it and the twins have always relied heavily on one another. As they get older and their interests vary, they have started to go their own ways but Gale’s End is the first time she’s met and befriended people without the influence of her brother. She’s both excited and terrified to see how she’ll grow and change through these interactions and become more of an individual than part of a pair.

She loves music and art, but her only artistic abilities are calligraphy. She’s also not the most graceful or coordinated but she loves to dance, and is the type to clumsily dance around her kitchen to her favorite record when nobody is watching. 

Though she’s outwardly prim and polite, she’s her happiest and most genuine when she’s letting loose and letting her hair down. She feels that she has to put on a mature air as the oldest of her siblings, but at some point she’s not sure if it started just being an act or an actual part of her personality. She yearns to toss responsibilities aside and run carelessly through the fields, but constantly keeps herself in check.

Tldr: Local girl lived a happy life with her family and is extremely close with her twin brother. After her father’s sudden passing, she took his ticket to Gale’s End to try to better understand her complicated relationship with him. She’s leaving her family and the comforts of home for the first time and trying to find herself and her passions.

Willow’s childhood wasn’t anything too extraordinary. She grew up with three siblings in a humble home in a mostly starborn community. Her parents separated when she was still too young to remember it, but still lived together with their four children and remained friends over the years. Her mother did the majority of the child rearing and caring for the home, while their father worked long hours in a factory, and would go out drinking with friends before coming home. 

The children spent a lot of time building the garden outside of their home together and their mother always had fresh, home grown fruits and vegetables in her cooking. Even though she loves food, she’s not much of a chef but she hasn’t needed to be because her mother and Aspen were phenomenal cooks. 

She and her twin brother Aspen have been inseparable since childhood, though their relationship with their father was one of the first things to ever pull them apart. Both twins got along with their mother, but Willow’s relationship to her father was strained. As the oldest of the children, he often put the weight of caring for her mother and her siblings on her shoulders, avoiding the responsibility that should have been his. Though she loves her siblings, she feels some resentment at having to pick up the slack where he couldn’t be bothered. When he was around they got along and shared many interests and humor, and she has him to thank for her love of music and calligraphy. Unlike Aspen, Willow would also argue with her father more than anyone else. Despite her meek demeanor she had little to no problem standing up against her own family members.

Regardless of if her father was around or not, Aspen and Willow’s family life was peaceful. Their mother began seeing someone new and as they talked about moving and possibly splitting the household, their father told them he’d purchased a ticket to Gale’s End and would be heading there to switch careers next year. He planned to get his own plot of land and spoke often about how he’d shape it to be his. Aspen and Willow felt like he might just abandon them, but before they got the chance to talk about with him it their father got sick. The doctor’s told him it was dire, and that he wouldn’t be around for long. Right up until the end he talked about his ticket to Gale’s End and that he was going one way or another, even if they had to wheel him out in his hospital bed. 

He passed away before he could ever go, and as their mother moved in with her girlfriend and took their two younger siblings, Willow made the choice to take the ticket and go to Gale’s End in her father’s place. Her brother Aspen stayed behind to help the rest of the family grieve and to deal with the funeral preparations. Though this was her first time being truly out on her own without her brother or mother to lean on, she felt this was the right choice for her. She can’t fully understand her own motivations, but she wants to gain some understanding of what he wanted and the kind of person he was. Even if it was complicated, she still loved her father and for the time being she wants to recreate her father’s vision for his spot in Gale’s End. Her brother Aspen wants to come live with her once things are calmer back home, and she’s assured him she’ll get settled in the meantime.