Fun Friends!

The two hundred and fifty second friend. A padlock. She feels proud to protect the things she loves. She can keep things safe. She sometimes feels a lot of pressure though. Being the watchful protector so much of the time can get tiring. She worries about what would happen if she was not there, but sometimes she desperately wishes for a break. She wants those she cared about ti take her in and wrap themselves around her. She wants them to keep her safe for once. Still, she will look after them. She takes pride in what she does and will never stop trying to keep everyone safe.

The two hundred and fifty first friend. A snail. He is very sociable and spends lots of time with his friends. He enjoys the company of others and can get rather lonely if no-one is around. He is always chatting with people or making plans. Whenever someone asks what he did at the weekend, he always has an answer and some story or other to tell. He may be a little slower than others, but he doesn't mind. It just gives him more time to enjoy life and to talk to whoever he's travelling with. His friends are more than happy to take a little bit more time with him. They enjoy his company just as much as he enjoys theirs.

The two hundred and fiftieth friend. An envelope. She contains a letter. She doesn't know what the letter says. She has never read it. That's not her job. She is there to protect its secrets, even from herself. The writer's privacy should be protected. Still, she likes to guess sometimes. She thinks it is a love letter. She can feel love emanating from its pages. She could see the writer's soft grin as they wrote it. She thinks they are hopelessly in love with whoever the letter is for and she is happy for them. She hopes the recipient will be just as happy when they read those words that she has been guarding. She has been keeping them safe for them.

The two hundred and forty ninth friend. An apple. She loves music. His favourite music is opera. She likes hearing what people can do with their voices and thinks opera singing is incredibly impressive. She does like most other genres though. Her playlist is a very strange experience for others to listen to. It can switch from classical to rap to pop to whatever else. He loves it though. He loves it all the more for its variety.

The fortieth week of friends. Here they are, in order of their creation. Inky, Slice, Lep, Brick, Train, Cat, and Shine. I really like Inky. They're just good, what can I say? Slice and Brick are also pretty good. I still don't know what happened with Train. I took a screenshot near the beginning of that drawing when I had completely forgotten what a train looked like and it is bad. I won't add it here as that isn't really the format of this blog, but it's so bad. Trust me. Anyway, Shine, Cat, and Lep are fine. I like them, just less than the others.

The two hundred and forty eighth friend. A star. She glows in the night, bringing beautifully bright light to the darkness around her. She glows in the day too, but it cannot be seen from Earth. To her, it is always day. She is the bright sun to herself. She knows nothing but her own light. Various celestial bodies surround her; rocky planets, asteroids, gas giants. None provide the warmth and brightness that she does. None can give back to her what she gives to them, but she loves them all the same. She loves them for what they can bring, each of their unique gifts. She loves them as they love her, just as they are.

The two hundred and forty seventh friend. A cat. She is a very small cat. She lives in her home with her family. It's a nice, warm place. She has food and safety there. She used to live on the street before they took her in. She was cold and hungry and afraid. Now she has people to rely on and to love her. She has everything she could ever want. She doesn't have to fight to survive anymore. She's happy there, happier than she ever thought she could be.

The two hundred and forty sixth friend. A toy train. She likes to bring joy to the child who owns her. Though he doesn't know she's alive, she feels connected to him through watching him grow up. She's been there for so much of his life. She was a character in countless stories that he made up, both by himself and with friends. She was a way to pass the time or to imagine incredible things. She ached when she saw him hurting and desperately wished she could do more to help him. She knows that one day he will grow up and she will be less important to him. She hopes she'll be able to stay in his life, even just as a decoration on her shelf. Perhaps she will be given on to a new child to provide joy to them, but she wants to be with her current friend. Her dream is to stay with him and be passed on to a child that he may have himself some day. That is her deepest desire.

The two hundred and forty fifth friend. A brick. He is a simple being with simple needs. He likes to be useful and help people with things. He holds up his wall and watches the world go by. He isn't interested in anything flowery or complicated. At least, that's what he pretends. Secretly, he writes poems in his spare time. He loves to think about how connected he is to the other bricks in his wall and how they are so mon stronger together. He thinks about how much he loves them all and how they mean the world to him as his friends. He would never tell them this for fear of being laughed at, but he cares so much for them. In reality, they care for him too and wouldn't turn him away for having a sensitive side. They're his friends and they love him just as much as he loves them, even if they'll never tell each other.

The two hundred and forty fourth friend. A little shape. She's only small, but she's full of love. She likes to spend her time with her friends whenever possible. She's always chatting away to whoever will listen about anything at all. She likes to hear about other people. She loves hearing all about their days and finding out what makes them tick. The more mundane parts of other people's lives are what she finds most interesting. She wants to know when they do their laundry and what their favourite spices are and what their morning routine is. She thinks things like this are what let you truly know a person.

The two hundred and forty third friend. A slice of cheese. She is an enjoyer of the finer things in life. She likes to be in fancy surroundings with only the best treatment. It's the life she was born into and is used to. She has been told that she can be arrogant. She insists that she just won't settle for less. Still, recently she has tried listening to what people say about her rather than simply going on the defense. She's considering that they might have a point and beginning to work on herself. Everyone can always be better and if she won't settle for less from her life, she won't simply allow herself to be anything less than perfect.

The two hundred and forty second friend. A wizard. They are just a little guy living alone in the woods. Long ago, they were a mushroom. A human wizard gave them life and they have been doing magic since then. They greatly look up to him and want to be as talented as he is. They cast their spells and work to get better with each one. They prefer living where it is dark and damp. They sometimes miss their simple mushroom life and the connection they felt through the network. Still, now they have a goal and can shape their life around it. They are free to live however they want and they hope they will be able to become the best that they can be.

The thirty ninth week of friends. Here they are, in order of their creation. Fire, Face, Vampire, Eek, Stitches, Bottle, Poppy. I like quite a lot from this week. I'm struggling to find any more to say about them other than that. The contrast between Vampire and Stitches is kind of funny. This silly cartoon guy then this detailed, unsettling face. Fun fact: I needed to remember what the shading on faces looked like so I kind of used a reference for Stitches, but it was actually just some woman I found on Google images. I wonder what they would think of what I used their image for.

The two hundred and forty first friend. A poppy. She's too young to remember the war herself. She knows a little about it and how her ancestors grew across the battlefields, but she wasn't alive yet. She gets to experience the world after the war. She gets to grow in a field that is free from suffering. She doesn't have to see pain and misery. She is happy and lives freely in peace because it's all over now.

The two hundred and fortieth friend. A bottle. It once held liquid, a long time ago. It doesn't remember what anymore. The memories flowed away not too long after the liquid itself. All it remembers now is that purpose. For a while, it held a message. It doesn't think it ever knew what the message said. It simply held it until it was passed on. It hopes that it reached whoever it was that needed it, but it doesn't remember enough information to know. Now, it is empty. It is waiting. It hopes that it will one day be given another task. It longs to be useful. It knows deep inside that it was made to be useful, even if it doesn't remember all of the details. It wants to be filled with a sense of purpose again. Some day, it will be.

The two hundred and thirty ninth friend. A human, kind of. He was created by a scientist from leftovers. The scientist stitched him together with love. Nobody was using those old bits and pieces, so she decided to turn them into something beautiful. She named her creation 'Stitches'. He has a complicated relationship with life. He struggles to relate to those around him. People often look on him with fear and he has difficulty making friends as a result. His eyes and mouth are stitched shut so he can't see and struggles to communicate sometimes. He has spent a lot of time wondering about his place in the world and if he will ever have the love of anyone other than his creator. Now, he is beginning to come to terms with himself and his nature. He has a lot to give to the world and some people can accept him for who he is. Being a little unsettling doesn't make him any less valuable or any less alive.

The two hundred and thirty eighth friend. A mouse. She loves to scurry about searching for scraps. She'll eat anything, she isn't picky. Something about food in unusual shapes particularly delights her. She has risked being found by humans many times because of cubed snacks. She has learned nothing from these experiences. Her family warns her about the dangers of people, but she just can't help herself. As well as food, she is a fan of art. She sees beauty in all things. From the swaying of the grass in the breeze to the rainbow swirls of oil in a puddle, it's all beautiful in her eyes. To her, art is about capturing the spark of life and she can find that spark in anything. Her mother is her biggest fan and appreciates everything she creates.