Need to fancy it up

Anthea grinned a little with a bashful flick of her ears as Mercury declared the tradition she described to be adorable. "Oh, they can be all kinds of colors or materials. Usually they're themed after things the one they're being made for likes or something that represents them. I've seen them made out of leather like this, branches, vines, sown together furs... Anything you can eventually work into a circle shape," she replied with a little laugh. She made pretty quick work of making a thick, braided rope out of the strips of leather, tucking in flowers, ribbons, and any other colorful decoration she could find between the strands of the braid. Once she was satisfied with the length of it she would bring the two ends together, the leather thick and stiff enough to hold its shape as she tied the ends together to form a circle and complete the wreath with one last piece of leather to use as a point to hang it from.

When she asked about his family she could immediately tell that she had accidentally found a sore point for him as he began to speak and immediately seemed to trail off, unable to finish what he was saying. She paused from her work a bit, glancing up at him with a mix of curiosity and sympathy. Even before he began to describe the events that befell him and his family, Anthea already could sense that there was even more in common with him than she realized. While her story of loss had taken the form of a forest fire, his stemmed from a volcano that wiped them out while he was away at sea. Even though he escaped that fate, the volcano still effected his ship and his crew, landing him here with just his traditions to remember them by. It was heartbreaking and she found herself with her mostly finished project held between her paws, her blended gaze lingering on his face as she listened to his story. She had already felt comfortable with him, but now she understood how tragedy had struck his life as well and that made her feel an even stronger kinship to him.

When his gaze met hers and she saw the shimmering glistening of tears across his pale blue eyes, a soft, gentle smile pulled at her lips and she shifted a bit closer, just close enough to reach over and take his paw with hers to give it a squeeze. "I don't think he'll regret it at all," she said softly, swallowing past the emotion that was welling up in her chest. "I'm sorry that happened to you. I'm sorry any of this happened to either of us," she added, blinking away a sheen of tears from her own eyes as she took her paw away again, looking down a the wreath she had made as she held it between her paws. "But we can get through this together, right? With every wind chime you make and every wreath I made we'll celebrate all of them and they can still be here with us." She squeezed the wreath gently in her paws for a moment before she looked back up to him with a sad smile, a couple of tears escaping her eyes and falling into dark, slate fur. "All we can do is keep going and make them proud, right?"

"Anthea Dásos"