And can he poke the rock's spirit-self with the twig?

The rock is (materially) not even here. The stick passes through like it's air.

That's... okay, to be expected he supposes. How slow is glacially slow, anyway, how long would the ring take to reach the bird?

If the stones all began at the centermost point, it must have been days at this pace. Another few hours, or maybe a day, until the ex-bird is inside. But since it's expanding in every which way, the bird probably isn't a goal.

And how did the other practitioners miss this...?

...hmm.

........hmmmm.........

He uses the stick to try to roll one of the smaller rocks until it's not inside the outer spirit circle anymore.

The other ones probably just never looked. Why should they, it's just a dead bird. There's weird things that happen all over the place, and this one's not all that unique.

The material rocks will fall down and roll out just as much as they normally should. It makes a brief stop when it perfectly fits where the spirit world says it should be, but doesn't prevent him from pushing it more.

Okay good. Now he grabs the rock that's not a circle anymore and... well, he's not sure how to do this, so first of all he'll try to pull on it and see if that works as sympathy magic to dislodge the equivalent spirit one from its position.

It doesn't respond. It just stays where it is while its counterpart moves in his hand.

What if he announces his intent to move the spirit version of the rock out loud and drips some Bob on it before doing the same thing again very dramatically?

It works, in the sense that the rocks got attached. The illusion one shudders and shakes. But it stays where it is, and the physical stone now refuses to move any more.

Really? What if he tries putting it down?

It still doesn't move; he attached it real good. Now the rock will just hang in the air.

Whoa. That's kinda cool. And if he tries, say, pushing it towards its spirit self? ...and if that doesn't work, maybe he could try doing it while declaring an intent to do so?

Its counterpart's static, so neither will move. He can break the attachment with Bob, but other than that it'll stay where it is. (Well, presumably both of them drift.)

Yeah he'll do that. So useful, Bob is.

The stone, once released, tumbles suddenly down, and lands standing on end on the ground. On the same patch of ground where its counterpart is, now that Sadde provides the excuse.

That's really cool. Does anything happen if he pokes the connection between the rocks?

Not really, it's like any typical rocks that just happen to be in a ring.

Okay... and if he nudges all the rocks to their places in the spirit circle?

Then the stones will arrange themselves, settling down, exactly where they ought to be. The circle's still growing, but slowly and so the rocks all fit near perfectly.

...and nothing else happens, right, that's not very interesting.

(It occurs to him the spirit world might've somehow nudged him into doing this. This is a terrible system.)

Okay, what about the li'l corpse?

It's only a bird. More dissolved than decayed, indigestible parts still intact. There is no clear connection with it and the ring, but coincidence doesn't exist.

No it doesn't. And, digested, ew, what.

...what if he pokes the bird into the circle.

Then no change in either. It flops past the line, and the circle grows at the same pace.

Well. Alright. He'll check on this later; for now he'll go to another place on her list.