WoLsday Questions!

Willow has a spriggan/dust bunny minion named Mote. She first encountered it doing some odds and ends work in Thanalan, and it followed her home when she made the mistake of giving it a few shiny rocks she'd found. She keeps it around and feeds it small rocks she comes across or pulls out of equipment she's desynthing for parts. Mote was entrusted to Hoary Boulder temporarily right before the events of The Parting Glass, and these days more-or-less hangs out at the Rising Stones causing minor mischeif.

In terms of mounts, both her Grand Company chocobo Malmberry and the black chocobo Ferdinand are ones she's used extensively. Malmberry comes with her basically everywhere she can take her; Willow's spent a lot of time training her chocobo to fight and defend itself, both for its benefit and her own. In return, she dotes on it extensively. In addition to spoiling it with treats after a long day and spending too much Gil on silly bardings, she tries to always make time for grooming and tending to her chocobo. Things have to be dire indeed before Willow will skip helping groom Malmberry's feathers as part of her nightly rituals.

Bonus detail: Malmberry's name comes from a combination of two names under consideration: Mulberry, which she thought would be cute, and 'The Final Malm', which she thought would be funny. The final result is a slightly incomprehensible pun.

Tutorial NPC teaching you about summoning your Companion chocobo for battle, but she's going to make you fight her chocobo first to show you how strong and cool they can be. Alternately: Levequest giver.

The reward would invariably be some kind of ridiculous hat.

Willow would have had very little formal education, if any. Her parents can read and write (probably?), but a lack of learning materials meant that she fell behind in that area pretty quickly. What education she did explicitly receive from her parents focused on "practical" skills such as herbal medicine, hunting + making leather, and sewing. Alphinaud begins teaching her her letters during the events of HW, and his efforts are later supplemented by a House Fortemps tutor. The situation wasn't exactly conducive to consistent studying, but by the time she leaves Coerthas for the events of StB she's reached an average(-ish) reading level. She adds books to her collection in her apartment whenever she can, both for the twins and for herself.

Willow will adopt your stray children if you leave them in her care long enough. She basically considers Alphinaud and Alisaie her actual kids, and Unukalhai is pretty much there as well. She has experience helping her parents care for her significantly younger brother, and the twins are about the same age. She's a bit of a mother hen when it comes to protecting them, but it comes from a good place.

It's... complicated.