default XCURSORPATH is not xdg spec compliant
As you can see in xcursor.c, the only per-user directories for the icon themes are ~/.icons/
and ~/.cursors/
. According to the xdg base directory specification, it should at least also be looking into ~/.local/share/icons/
or $XDG_DATA_HOME/icons/
if $XDG_DATA_HOME
is set.