This is a drawing I did a while back when thinking about an early part of the BTBF storyline. In the first or second chapter Jonah recounts all the events of his childhood prior to meeting Jonathan Jackrabbit. I have mentioned before how Jonah struggled to make friends as a young kid due to his lack of understanding of personal space and inappropriate touching. Jonah did have one childhood friend before Jonathan however, a girl named Faith.
Originally I had imagined she would be a raccoon girl. Jonah would have been interested in her ringed tail. However, when I needed two girls for page 3 of my comic I ended up creating a raccoon girl, later named Peggy Pratchett, based closely on my original concept for the nursery friend, but with a much more dour demeanor. Since I had already included her in the official comic, rather than retcon this, I decided to keep Peggy as canon. But then the Nursery School friend also being a raccoon girl seemed redundant. So I attempted to redesign the character. I knew it needed to be an animal with some kind of prominent ear or tail feature to attract Jonah's attention. Fennec Foxes have almost comically large ears and big bushy tails relative to their diminutive stature, so they seemed like a good choice. The character design here is still tentative, but I think it's a pretty good fit for what I was going for.
As for the story, Jonah likely befriended Faith either at Pleasant Park (the first park Jonah is regularly taken to where he is first introduced to other children) or a little later in Nursery School. He's interested in her enormous ears, and soft bushy tail, and in typical Jonah fashion touches them without first being introduced or asking if it's okay (a similar incident happens with Jonathan about a year later in Camp Innocence). Unlike most children however she just giggles and doesn't seem to mind. They become playmates in Nursery School, likely playing "house" or other simple imaginary games. Arguably Jonah's first friend, and first real interaction with another child, as he had no siblings growing up (Penelope was born much later, a few years after knowing Jonathan). At this early stage of his life Jonah probably has no real concept or understanding of the binary division of biological sex. To him, everyone is undifferentiated, except perhaps by species, although that concept is also probably nebulous to him. What he does understand is that those with features different than his interest him. In other words, even from a fairly young age Jonah seems to possess an innate heterogenitic tendency. Although Jonah is no doubt also fascinated by Faith's soft flowy hair, this is not necessarily because she is a girl since he can't distinguish or doesn't understand the concept of different sexes yet (Jonah has a number of cognitive anomalies, frequently leading to misunderstandings or unusual ways of thinking about things). If he is slightly more interested in girls this is likely explained by his interest in anything exotic, anything different than himself (a feature which undoubtedly plays a role in his interest in Jonathan later on). However in Pleasant Park he was known to be just as invasive and curious of other boys as girls. Jonah seems to be merely drawn outwards from himself but not in any particular direction.
But Faith being the first to respond to him in kind, perhaps to want to play with his tail as well, is what made this bond special to him. Jonah may have well felt something of a crush for Faith, probably going so far as to say he would marry her someday. However this is due in part to the fact that Jonah has no concept of "friendship". The only relationship he understands other than the parent-child relationship, is that of a married couple. He believes that furs find their "special someone" and that the love they share together is what produces a child (due to a poor explanation by his mother). He has no understanding of sex, the opposite sex, or that members of opposite sexes must join together to produce children.
I had originally not intended to share this as I was unsure if this would be the final design of Jonah's Nursery School playmate. I'm still not 100% sure, but I figured it didn't matter as this can just be considered a pre-production sketch if I should change my mind, though at this point it seems unlikely. A Fennec is probably the next best choice after a Raccoon for an attention grabbing feature for a not too exotic species (I also have always liked Fennec's ever since I learned about them). In universe Anthromorphic Fennecs are probably not indigenous to the States, so she likely has ancestry elsewhere, her family likely originating in the African Deserts (just like real life Fennecs).
I like the way Jonah came out here. It seems quintessentially "Jonah" and just the right balance of adorkable. Faith came out nice as well. She seems a fitting playmate to a rambunctious silly boy like Jonah, a Yin to his Yang as it were, a girl who is gentle and easy-going. One could consider her, Jonah's first girlfriend. What happens between these two? Well as usual ... I'm saving that for the story itself.
Faith Zerda is a minor character from the storyline "Better Than Best Friends", commonly abbreviated BTBF.
