Sun Mote Copse Don't like where I'm at, 34 was bad, so I just turn to 35

The first thing that Maia noticed was how horrible Eljay looked.  Not looks wise... she'd always counted him as cute, as she did most, but everything about him just seemed to exude 'giving up'.  Even she could tell, and she wasn't normally the most with it when it came to noticing others' problems.  Immediately she felt a small hit in the pit of her stomach.  Why do you always have to fail?  You should have looked harder, should have kept looking.  Now you have to tell him.  Her ears tipped back.

Umm, hey.  Are.... are you okay?  She didn't know how this conversation was going to go, but she wasn't about to just hit him with the news first.  It was likely obvious, anyway, by the fact she witheld that she hadn't found him.  But before they talked about that, she wanted to hear how he was doing, because friends didn't talk about this sort of thing without checking in first.