Sun Mote Copse these sacred lands have seen many hands

<3

After learning from @Avery that the inconceivable had happened, Weejay had followed him disbelievingly to her grandparents. She had already experienced loss once, but this just went and tore open the carefully healed fabric of her last wound. Looking down at Finley and Elwood, all she could think of was that they looked so peaceful.. but it wasn't fair.

She wasn't ready.

None of them were ready.

With tears brimming in her eyes Weejay turned and ran, her eyes closed and the image of both of her grandparents, blissfully sleeping forever, still burning within her gaze. She ran with no goal in mind, but eventually, she found herself on a cresting hill not so far from where her grandparents had been found. Rubbing the tears from her eyes, Weejay looked down the slope. Her vision was blurry, but she followed a slant of midmorning sunlight. The hill, outlined in an arc of brilliant gold, looked like something out of a fairy tale.

How could it look so beautiful, when around her the world was so sad?

She headed uphill, feeling desolation choke her heart as she looked down at the lowlands. The valley was picturesque in the morning glow, but it did nothing to lighten the sinking of her burdened heart. She felt for her daddy, for Avery and Fenn, for her aunts and uncles all who had known her grandparents for far longer, and stood to lose far more.

Her visual inspection of the sweeping lowlands paused as she saw, not so far from where she stood, a little blaze of shivering violet in the wind. Picking her way towards it, Weejay realized she was looking at a small bunch of early-spring flowers poking through the damp earth. She bent down, her eyes wide as she examined the new find with a quiet gasp. In her eyes, the flower was inestimably beautiful -- purple happened to be one of her favorite colors, and it seemed fortuitous she had come across it in this hour.

Without even pausing to think if they were poisonous, Weejay removed the edging of grass about them and uprooted one of the plants, taking care to carry the bundle by the stem where it was less likely the roots would get destroyed.

The tears that had dried along her cheeks resumed when she came closer to her grandparents -- dread filled her heart as she saw them again, unmoved from where she had seen them last. Weejay placed the uprooted flowers by her grandparents' entwined muzzles, managed a dry sob as she looked upon them, and then ran into the wildwood.