Sun Mote Copse darkness

read only, but if you want to respond feel free to respond with a 1 post about how your character's taking Eljay's behaviour / how they act around him currently. tags for reference. :)

After Finley and Elwood had died, Eljay wasn't really quite sure what to do with himself. He spent a lot of time fussing over @Towhee and @Meerkat, not because he thought anything was wrong with Meerkat but because he needed to, well, do something. He remembered vividly the time that mommy had gone missing for months and how he had almost died, but for his siblings. So aside from caring for Towhee and Meerkat and making sure that @Niamh's pregnancy was going well, he spent time making sure that @Avery and @Penn were looked after. In truth, he probably did more bad than good by constantly fussing over everyone in the family, but at least so far it had kept Eljay from falling apart himself.

He hadn't been able to find @Weejay, after, and it worried him greatly. Eljay had wanted to find her to tell her himself, but somehow their paths had not crossed and he had had to find out from Avery that she'd been informed. It hurt him a lot that he hadn't able to tell her himself but it hurt him even more to find that she had left the Copse since then. He was terrified to lose his only other child, afraid that she wouldn't return or worse, get hurt along the way.

At his parents' grave he found the flowers she left, which he instantly recognised as Weejay's. Eljay had gone searching through the Copse that day, screaming Weejay's name until his voice was hoarse and he had no place left to search anymore. He cried himself to sleep that night, his breathing tight and his heart filled with a deeply seeded fear that he would lose his only remaining child, too.

He didn't see @Maia -- well, not until she asked him to come explore to look for Elfie with her, which he reluctantly did because he hoped they might find Weejay, too -- and he didn't see @Wraen much unless she came looking for him either, not wanting his friend to see him when he was at his weakest.

It might surprise those around him that Eljay was rather actively trying to keep everyone healthy -- especially those who might've heard of or been there through his crumbling apart when his mother had been gone in the past -- and although one could argue that he was doing much better than he would've handled a situation like this before, Eljay himself felt like he was failing and hanging on by his last tethers of mental health and sanity.