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Occtis Tachonis wakes up dead. This is less surprising than waking up at all.
Later that night, they are curled up in Thaisha's family's house's living room.
Thaisha is pressed against him on the sofa in mild desperation, clearly not having gotten over his death quite yet.
Halandil and Bolaire are on opposite sides of a sofa, Murray and Azune squished between them and sharing a mildly pained glance. He very firmly decides he isn't getting involved in whatever that tension between the pair is.
Julien has sequestered himself in the shower. Vaelus is perched on the windowsill, because she doesn't know how to not be cool.
Occtis watches the others. Mostly, though, he watches Bolaire.
Occtis Tachonis has taught himself near enough everything he knows about magic. He is not a dumb man.
He can and will teach himself to mimic the living. He has to, in this city.
It's impressive. He only noticed because he has to think about it now.
Bolaire Lathalia is copying the people around him.
Seeing as Occtis isn't stupid - he knows he would never have noticed had he not needed to think about it - he copies Bolaire in turn. Clearly, the man's doing something right.
The quiet smirk on that painted face suggests that the curator's noticed.
Slowly, the room empties, until it's just himself, Halandil, Thaisha and Bolaire left.
Thaisha quietly slips out of the room to submerge herself in a warm bath, as is her right after everything that went down today. Almost absent-mindedly, Bolaire stretches where he lounges.
Almost absent-mindedly.
Occtis, narrowing his eyes at the other, grumpily does the same.
Okay.
So maybe Bolaire has a point.
Halandil is watching their little game with something approaching amused understanding as Occtis' limbs respond horrifically sluggishly to his desires.
He groans aloud at the realisation.
He is very, very glad that Thaisha isn't in the room right now. She's barely coping with his death, let alone his undeath.
Occtis Tachonis has taught himself near enough everything he knows about magic. He is not a dumb man.
He has, more importantly, taught himself everything he knows about necromancy, in some foolish, misguided attempt at making his family proud of him before he realised they never would be.
He knows bodies.
More importantly right now, he knows death.
"Does this place have a pantry?" He asks no one in particular. He knows it does. These old houses are all built the same.
The problem he has is rigor mortis. That isn't, in and of itself, necessarily an issue - it passes after a few hours, after all.
The potential for decomposition is Occtis' main concern. The coolness of the pantry ought to alleviate some of that concern, for a time.
He strides forwards as steadily as a newly made corpse can, and plucks Pin off of Bolaire's lap. He has no idea when Pin got on Bolaire's lap, but the little shit has always done what he wants.
He kisses Pin on his adorable fuzzy forehead. "Let's go hang out in the pantry while we check if I decompose, Pincushion."
"And also what the hell we're going to do about that if it turns out I do," he declares to the adorable, empty headed undead critter.
He scowls at his fox in sudden realisation, dangling him like Simba from that old play.
"How do you not decompose, you feral little gremlin, you? You're just as undead as I am!" He complains to a chorus of wheezing from Halandil and mildly alarming giggling from Bolaire as he slips out of the living room and into the kitchen to hunt down the Lloy family's pantry, eat their snacks, and note down how his undead body reacts to those snacks.
Occtis is going to actually kill someone if it turns out that the answer is badly.