Eli Ha

Eli stands at five-foot-five-feet tall, with fluffy, somewhat messy blonde hair and shining brown eyes. He's got a square jaw, but with how often he grins and how big they are that can be hard to tell. It's about a half-and-half split between when he actually puts in the effort to style his hair to be nice and neat or just lets it do its own thing (it generally depends on how tired he is). He's got an impressive amount of muscle for his age, but that doesn't make him any less of a beanpole, and while he tends to stick to t-shirts and jeans when it comes to his attire he generally carries around another layer with him. Typically, a stolen hoodie from Caine.

## Personality

Eli is a trouble magnet. No matter what he does, the cards never seem to be dealt in his favor at worst and at best things tend to be inconvient. To his credit, though, he tends to just grin and bear it no matter what comes his way: it's how he's dealt with everything in his life so far, and he thinks it's worked well enough. Along with him constantly getting himself in trouble for whatever reason, he finds great joy in causing trouble for others. He is, essentially, a massive troll who thrives on chaos, and he likes making things difficult. Why, after all, would he take the easy way when he *could* pour his heart and soul into making a nuisance of himself? He is also driven by spite; ask him to do something and he's highly likely to do the opposite, and if he's asked he'll say that the main reason he still exists is because the world didn't want him to — as far as he's concerned, the reason trouble is so attracted to him is because he was never supposed to exist at all, but he insisted upon the opposite. His affinity for starting fires doesn't help at all — at heart, Eli is an arsonist. He couldn't tell you what, exactly, he likes so much about fire, though (part of it is just *everything* about it, and another is that he doesn't even know *why* he likes it so much in the first place). He carries a lighter with him basically everywhere he goes — he even got his hands on a few zippos, and he treasures them greatly — despite the fact that he doesn't really need them for everyday life, and whenever a chance is given to him to start a fire he can't help but to take it. In general, he's a pretty sassy individual: he's always got some snappy comment on the tip of his tongue and is ready to insult just about everyone, though when he insults someone close to him it's meant as his own brand of affection. He's also constantly up for a bit of trouble-making, even (or sometimes especially) if it's at someone else's expense: more than once since he's been adopted, he has nearly been arrested for things like doing graffiti or some bystander complaining about him or just generally disturbing the peace. As far as he's concerned, the laws and rules laid out for him are just guidelines, and there's plenty of times where he decides to not follow them. He leans onto the impulsive and reckless side of the spectrum: one incident that would be pointed out by his siblings is when he jumped into a water fountain in the middle of winter because he didn't have a reason *not* to, and the cold he got as a result of it. He is certainly one to think through his actions at least some of the time, and he will definitely do everything in his power to make sure that those close to him don't get hurt because of him, but he is also definitely willing to indulge in his impulsive and/or reckless behavior without any regard to his own well-being. While Eli can certainly come off as the type that isn't all that smart, that isn't necessarily the case. He's got a good memory, is good at thinking on his feet, and a killer instinct he was forced to hone during his time roughing it. He can most definitely lean into more emotion-driven behaviors, and he often does (he is, after all, a bit of a cry-baby and has always worn his heart on his sleeve), but that doesn't make him stupid by any means. He can sometimes be a bit clingy; he can deal with people not being around him, but if someone leaves for a long while and doesn't come back then he'd start worrying about if they'll ever come back at all, and maybe if he'd driven off yet another person in his life. Despite what his outwardly energetic disposition implies, he is just as much of an insomniac as his dad and little sister, but not for the reasons they can't sleep. It's pretty common for him to get so caught up and focused on something that he doesn't even realize the night hours flying by, and before he knows it the sun's rising and it's too late for him to get any sleep now. As such, he relies quite heavily on coffee to operate from day-to-day activities.

## Dæmon

Jasmine. Unsettled. Female.

Jasmine prefers small, plain things: typically birds, but also rodents like mice and shrews and voles. The biggest she'll get most of the time are merlins, the smallest is fireflies, and both of them are favorites of hers.

Unlike her boisterous and excitable human, Jasmine is skittish and shy. She doesn't really speak that often to people who aren't Eli (and sometimes not even to him), but when she does it's with a soft voice and some stuttering here and there. Even with that difference, though, she can be just as reckless as Eli is, but she does tend to the basic thinking of "why, this is stupid, Eli please no—" most of the time. She also likes taking things slower than Eli while her human is almost always going at full-throttle, and in general is a *lot* more calm than Eli is.

## History

Eli was the only child of Henry and Iris Mendis. From the start, it wasn't looking too good for him: his father had little patience for raising a baby and walked out on the family to go off and live in Brytain, leaving him with only his mother. His mother didn't treat him horribly, but she didn't treat him well, either — most of the time she just ignored him, and he learned to fend for himself early on since his mother wasn't always around to do it for him. When he was seven, she simply just didn't come back home: he lived on his own in their apartment for a week, but when he ran out of food he had to leave. While he was out, he realized that he just didn't *want* to go back home, even if his mother turned back up, so he didn't. He spent quite a bit of time roughing it in alleys or in parks, and nearly got caught by the police a few times in doing so (he thinks of it as a point of pride that he was never actually caught by them). About half a year into his time homeless he found Caine — Eli decided that they just *had* to be friends now, and pestered Caine until he agreed. The pair of them started to survive together, and started living in abandoned spaces rather than wherever looked most secluded. When he was ten, they found Melody and took her in — Eli was just happy to have more company. He's actually the reason they met Young-Chul, as they ran into the man when they were getting cold medicine after the Fountain Incident (TM). After some stubbornness on both of their parts and him growing closer to him (he was, after all, able to easily combat his snark with some of his own and it doesn't take a genius to tell that he was an insomniac, too), and having to be tossed into the foster system for a while while paperwork went through, before they were officially adopted by him. Unlike his siblings, though, when the prospect of changing their names came up Eli decided to just take on Young-Chul's last name rather than hyphenate his own; he was never that attached to his biological family, anyways.