it's like an echo, and not the thing...
Thaisha's careful words are directed at Thimble, hovering close to Occtis's shoulder as they approach the still-fresh grave of Thjazi Fang.
"Where did his...other stuff move to?" The pixie's voice is small, in that way it keeps getting when she's faced with the reality that her friend is truly gone.
"It goes down the Path and becomes something new..." Thaisha has her Voice on, that one like gentle hands, a guiding touch radiating the full bodied warmth of of a belief she can rely on as much as the sun rising each morning.
Perhaps it brings comfort to Thimble in this moment. He hopes it does, she needs it.
But the words ring hollow inside Occtis. Because his stuff still here —here but wrong, put back inside him the wrong way, parts of it left behind somewhere, the rest falling out of him through clumsy stitches and clawed hands at night as he waits, awake, for that sun rise sure as it does every morning. Cyclical and forever. Unending.
"Hopefully." He summons the word up from the pitless bottom of his stomach.
Thaisha said they might only be able to reach an echo of Thjazi, whatever is left in his body, in the ground. Occtis, standing beside the grave of the man in question, hyper aware of that body nestled below the surface, can't help but feel like just as much of an echo.
Despite the hollowness, part of him does mean it as reassurance for his friend as well. It sounds peaceful, what the warmth of Thaisha's voice offers, being unmade into something new at the end of that path, the straight line of a life.
He envies Thjazi in these moments before they disturb whatever is left of him in the dirt. Simply a dead man.