Isabella.

The ginkgo is one of the oldest trees there is. It has been on Earth for more than two hundred million years, since long before the dinosaurs, and it held on when almost nothing did. That's why Isabella's mother chose that leaf and no other. She wears it the way you'd carry a small compass: something that reminds her that what endures, endures quietly. On the t-shirt, the silver leaf stands out against the sand-colored jacket, at the center of the portrait.

Isabella keeps things in case they're useful someday: recordings she doesn't delete, small objects, stray phrases. This pendant is one of the few she's sure about. She's a barn owl who works by listening, and when something is beyond her she answers with an honest line: "I can hear it, but I can't name it yet." It's good for teenagers who also carry their charm everywhere and who don't throw away what matters to them. I created her for my Animal Kinhood series; I'm Yago Partal, and there's more about Isabella in her biography.