Thoughts on Dame Gaya Seremai and Occtis (from your resident living dead girl):
I know I've mentioned this already but I'm truly losing my mind over Dame Gaya Seremai saying that she would do anything to avoid returning to the dark and Occtis saying that it's inevitable but he will always bring her back. Because a couple things. The critters I've heard talking about it seem to see it as sweet if a bit unhealthy. Seremai doesn't have a scared affect but you don't say that kind of shit if you're not desperate. Occtis wasn't intending it as a lie or a weak promise at all. But it's one he cannot keep because infinity extends beyond his abilities and he cannot guarantee his own safety. 2) it's not enough. It's not fucking enough. That's not a comfort. Maybe in the context of this one character in the show in that one moment it is because she's hoping her actions will be able to make a difference and they seem to be addressing grief over termination of life rather than the experience of dying.
But holy fuck, I wish there were critters I knew I could talk to about the fact that there is no protection from the feeling of dying again and again and again. Obviously I haven't died. Some people have and have come back. But the experience of dying, of reaching a state where your body needs emergency intervention or organs will begin to fail, that loss of warmth from your body and the inability to get warm again, like life is seeping into the air around you and you can't hold onto it. There's a fear nothing else could hold, that cannot be spoken, and an aloneness at the core of it that eats away at who you are. She said she would do anything to avoid it. He said he would bring her back. She will still die again and again and again and not only can he not protect her from that, he didn't even think to try and comfort or shield her from that part of it.
He can't keep her on this side permanently. She was so scared and he made a promise that things would be okay but not now, and not forever, and no protection for as long as you can anticipate. For a short while that might as well be a million eternities. And I don't think as a roleplayer or as a character in the narrative, he intended for it to be dishonest or a doomed precedent. I think he just didn't necessarily, in the narrative, at least, consider what it means to be fucking terrified of that space between life and death and being forced to remain there until safety can be granted again temporarily. As nothing more than a gift.