thewhitefluffyhat

Hornet: "Continue this work if it pleases you, but do not call me your mistress, for I am not." Styx: "But you ARE my mistress!" Hornet: "OK."

Hornet: "This pilgrimage is too dangerous. You should make a home in Bellhart." Sherma: "I'll gladly face any danger if it means seeing wonders like this!" Hornet: "OK."

Hornet: "I can free you from this prison." Old Penitent: "This isn't a prison, and I want to stay." Hornet: "OK."

now on top of leaving behind a cocoon, the cocoon also contains a blackened hornet husk

I hope we all agree this is a molt, something spiders and most bugs in general do, crumbling into crust

this on top of the cocoon makes me imagine something like hornet quickly spinning a "recovery chamber" out of silk to regenerate a completely new shell and leaving behind the old one, perhaps also acting as a decoy as she retreats to the nearest bench

the fetal position of the molt is both something dead spiders do irl and also something almost all husks did in hollow knight

Worth noting that coffins in hollow knight are called cocoons

so it can be read as both a burial and a rebirth in the thematic sense

"Cheating death by molting" also reminds me of a certain someone

(just to be clear: the king is dead dead, but it is still a fact that he "died" once when shedding his gargantuan wyrm shell in favor of his lesser form)

Ultimately, we dont know how literal to take the respawn mechanic

Moss Grotto with the siblings 🌿

closeups!

Y'all, imagine this with Lacenet. Lace is staying with Hornet post-SotV as she needs to recover from being inflicted with the Void. She feels horrible about having to be in Hornet's vicinity, about needing her to check up on her and even replenish her silk. She's supposed to be good, she can't be so high maintenance.

And then she watches Hornet repair her tools, with precision and care. And she asks why she would do such a thing, certainly a tool which might break is no good ever and shouldn't deserve reparation.

And Hornet just laughs and asks her why she would not repair a tool. Why she would throw away a tool right when it shows the faintest trace of use. That's counterintuitive, and frankly, dishonorable to the tool itself. No, she wouldn't do such a thing.

Rest below while you can. In the lands beyond these bells, it is rare to see such safety.