Olwen.

In winter, Olwen lays the valley's living hedges by hand. In summer there's no hedge to lay, so she does something else: she heads out before dawn to count hares for the county census. She walks the boundaries, stops, writes the exact number down in a notebook with an elastic band round it, and doesn't speak to anyone for hours. She discovered the first summer that it was the closest thing to rest she knew. The price is discussed once and doesn't come down; the census numbers she hands over without comment. Laying in winter and counting in summer are, to her, two halves of the same thing.

Her sister sends her good tea from Cardiff at Christmas; in return, Olwen sends wool. That first mug in the dark, with the valley still asleep, is one of the moments of the day she protects most. And even if you don't lay hedges in Wales, you probably have your own version: the first sip before anything else starts. Olwen is one of the characters from Animal Kinhood, my series of animals with a trade and a life of their own; this mug carries her serene face, facing forward. If you'd rather have her on the wall, the same portrait is available as a print.