Blacktail Deer Plateau open your heart to it

please shoot me a message before archiving threads that are vital to my character's development specifically. big dramatic threads like this take more time from me. you're always welcome to pull your character out if you don't want to wait. :)

she explained that she had been surviving and searching for all of them. the thought made his stomach lurch; it meant that she had not yet found ephraim or rhakios in her travels. perhaps that was for the best, as the young ghost still regarded his sandy brother with a great deal of hostility. he could not help but to blame ephraim for the loss of their father. if the idiot hadn’t run off to begin with, they never would have gotten separated. if he hadn’t wandered away into the woods, they would all still be together. the thought was enough to drive a bitter stake through his chest, but it did not prepare him at all for the question that followed.
 
’is… your father with you?’
 
he felt a knot twist in his gut and hold there. the wildling did not know how to convey what he knew to her, to the hope that he heard in her voice. he did not know how he was supposed to tell her about how he had found the old man beaten by the pull of the river and cast ashore on some strange lake to rot and decay. god, he wished that he could lie to her and tell her that he didn’t know where the ashen ghost had wandered away to. he wished he could allow her to cling to the idea that he could still return.
 
illidan shook his head softly and clenched his jaw as tightly as he could. he felt the pain sear against the back of his throat in an attempt to form the words, but he lacked all the social grace and capability to have such conversations. it was as though he had been transported back to his youth, and young boys should never have had to have that kind of conversation with their parents.
 
“he’s… he didn’t make it. he’s dead.”
 
the words were strangled from his lips and they hitched against the back of his throat one too many times to come out as strongly as he had hoped. the dark-hooded youth had not even noticed the disappearance of grezig in that time. he could not have noticed her even if he had wanted to. everything else seemed to fade away to the realization that he had finally admitted what he’d seen all those months ago. it was the first time that he had spoken about the travesty that had struck their family. he wanted it to be the last.
 
“can i go… can i go with you? wherever you are?” he then asked her, and glanced to kavik as though he were asking permission from the man who had taken him in.