There were a few things I tried when drawing:

• elsie with a witch hat / glasses. The glasses were reused later for the reading animation. The hat was reused for the other witch in the woods.
• elsie with love-y eyes (I was thinking of making the story about her helping and getting to choose a potion at the end. I figured she would be really excited to learn more about potions / collect recipes)
• elsie hair highlights. I originally removed them when I started optimizing ROM usage and wanted as few unique tiles as possible. I am not sure this was necessary in the end but I'll post here. parts of the hat also look much better with the reflections
• elsie hair animation. this probably wouldn't have been possible on the main screens (~40 sprite limit, even with 8x16 mode) but might have been possible in the cutscenes