Nala.

The black spiked collar is the most valuable thing she owns. Her mentor left it on the table the day she finished her first complete tattoo, with a folded note: "Don't take it off." There was no speech, no toast. She hasn't taken it off in years. That's how it works with him: with actions, never with words; they don't call each other friends, and they don't need to. It's the neck, guarded with a signal instead of a fight. A backpack inherits that same logic: you carry what matters and keep going, hands free.

It works as a school backpack, a travel bag, or for work: sling it on, put the day's things inside, and go. If you're going to wear it for eight hours, it might as well carry an aardwolf with character up front, the kind nothing rattles. Who Nala really is and what she carries is in her biography; here she arrives light, in backpack form. And if you like how this aardwolf fits into everyday life, she's part of a whole family of characters I make, Yago Partal.