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 Posted: Sat Nov 14, 2015 12:12 am
It had taken Damian a while to actually find his old wallet - he had buried it better than he'd thought. A quick check determined that yes, everything he had thought was in there still was. There was probably a story to be put together from the miscellany that Rhys Banner had chosen to keep with him, but it wasn't one Damian had given much thought to. Let Shale sort it out, and see what pieces he could put together from the man Damian used to be.
He turned the object over in his hands - small, slim, fairly fine leather. Expensive, for certain. The only thing missing now was the cash that had been in it - on the principle that it was his anyway, Dami had pulled it out when he first found the thing in his pocket. Everything else was wholly intact.
He left his room, settled at the kitchen table, continued idly turning it over.
"Shale?" He called. He was fairly certain his roommate was in. "I found the wallet, if you still wanted to see it."
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 1:30 am
The jar had sat undisturbed for months. He knew it, in the back of his mind, for all this time. He felt the guilt of letting the vessel of bones sit in languor for so long, and he reveled in it. He let it fester and feed the fire.
But that stress was no longer needed, so there it sat in his hands, yet unopened, and displaying to him the numerous bones collected over the ages. Fingers, all of them - very special, highly prized winnings from a difficult wager. There must've been thirty in total - six with but one hand to match their laziness. To do half a man's work. And with their hands free from the source, they found alternative uses.
Shale poured a handful, then rooted around in those he held for the scaphoid, the lunate, and the triquetrum. He checked the jar a second time to reclaim a triquetrum from within, and found immense difficulty in telling it apart from some of the other old, worn bones. Once he thought he held it in hand, he added it to the pile, and dumped the handful over a piece of parchment paper. They rolled, tumbled, and some threatened to run clear off the edge, but they stayed within their parameters, marked by a circle of blackberry paste. Shale waited, studied the random assortment, and tapped the butt of a thin paintbrush to his chin. The answers did not come easily after so many months of lapsed practice.
When Damian called, he dispersed Shale's concentration. The hunter did not mind terribly; he started to wonder if he could finish the tasks at present. The paintbrush found its stone hollow of blackberry paste while he waited for his roommate's approach. The hunter looked to him from over the vantage point of the couch - his roommate did not look perturbed, or distressed, or fearful of approaching him.
Shale held out his left hand for the bounty in question. His right would have to wait on joining the inspection until he washed it, for the paste mapped out very deliberate patterns upon the palm and fingers.
"Do you want to know about your old life?" He asked, curious.
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 1:45 am
Once upon a time, Damian would have been nervous disturbing Shale when he was working on something. He liked to think that he had perhaps gotten a little better at reading his roommate's moods, and so it was with no anxiety that he walked over - Shale didn't seem frustrated about being interrupted, at the least.
So he walked over, and leaned against the arm of the couch, passing the wallet over. The question made him consider, briefly - because certainly it was possible Shale would be able to follow a trail of identifying markers to end up at whoever he used to be. "Yes and no," he said honestly. "I'm curious, I imagine anyone would be - but it feels a bit pointless, in some ways. That life is lost to me, along with all my memories of it. I can't exactly go back, and I wouldn't want to." Perhaps oddly, he had found a lot of comfort in the life he had built for himself. He was earning money - if perhaps in a nontraditional way - and the apartment was feeling more and more comfortable and homey.
It was nice. Whatever he's had before, it couldn't have been very good, if he had been willing to give it all up in pursuit of corruption.
He took in Shale's project curiously, considering the spread of things on the table. Some of it looked like bones - and he was quite sure he did not want to know if they were real or not, but he was still rather interested. "What are you working on?"
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 2:10 am
"Then you don't understand life." It was a conclusion drawn not out of malice. He accepted the wallet.
Shale thumbed it open with one hand while the other sought a paper towel at his side. Gripping it dispersed some of the paste, but not all of it; he sucked a few fingers clean to better peruse the wallet's contents.
In the handful of seconds that passed in identifying the presence of bank cards, a library card, and old train passes, he recognized immediately the name and face displayed on the ID. Rhys Banner it read, and in those seconds an anger burned within him with such intensity that he thought it may melt his ribs and sear his skin away if he tried to withhold it. But he attempted as much, and though his jaw showed the clear definitions of clenching, no ill words or actions came of it.
When he was certain he could speak without ire, Shale issued a curt response. "I knew you before." The assortment of ticket stubs proved it, even if name and face heralded doubt. Shale kept the same stubs, perhaps for different reasons, but the times matched much the same. And the necklace...
Sharp eyes darted to Damian-Rhys' chest where its telltale bulge existed beneath the shirt. Yes, now that he watched the man, the truth of their similarities nigh stunned him. This is the power of deception that magic often takes. It's potent. It concealed the very same man as someone entirely different, and I didn't think that their appearances were at all similar.
Damian's question pulled him from thought while he stared at the man, however. "It's..." He paused and sighed through his nose. Prior attempts to explain his roots to Porsha often ended in blank stares or a disastrous lack of comprehension. He didn't want to assume that explaining anything to Damian would amount to the same, but he suspected it. Expected it. "It's easiest to say it's an unbiased recount of present affairs." He considered having Rhys - Damian try it, but he wondered if there was even point in trying.
Finally his attention returned to the wallet, whereupon he pulled the student ID and the government ID together. One showed signs of wear at the corner and one side. Next came the green card, the bank cards (one for a bank of England, it looked like), and the ticket stubs. Glancing into the wallet revealed small bills in American dollars, and a 20 pound note buried at the back. If nothing else, Rhys didn't lie about his origins - only in how he intended to leave.
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 2:29 am
Damian wanted to argue, but there was truth to Shale's statement, perhaps. Even if it was simply that their understandings came from thoroughly different perspectives. It was hard to claim understanding of anything when he had only a few month's worth of cobbled-together memories all told, for what was supposed to be, going by his old ID, twenty years of life.
He watched Shale carefully while he examined the things in the wallet - as if he could pull whatever conclusions Shale was drawing out of his head by looks alone. He didn't miss the subtle change in expression, the clenched jaw, but as far as he could tell it wasn't directed at him, and so he pressed back the urge to flinch or move away.
"I knew it," he said, half to himself, when Shale announced a recognition of the man he had once been. He had been sure there was a familiarity there, a feeling he couldn't place but also couldn't shake. It was both the most frustrating and most intriguing part of his memory loss, and having the feeling confirmed as attached to something real, an actual echo of memory - a victory, in a strange way. "How did we know each other?" The first of a thousand questions that begged to tumble out. He had said he was disinterested, but given something real and tangible - actual access - his curiosity was ravenous. Even if he was sure than any comparison between Damian and Rhys would only end with Damian found wanting.
And he had a thousand and one questions, too, about Shale's project, because the answer he got was not entirely forthcoming. "I would say 'I see,' but we would both know that's a bloody lie. I am interested, but I won't harass you to satisfy my curiosity if you'd rather not share." It applied both to the work and to himself. Pushing for more than Shale wanted to talk about either way was only going to end up running him into a brick wall.
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 9:12 am
"I met Rhys in passing at Destiny City. He and I were trapped in a hallway that filled up with students." How long had it been since he saw the man now? Technically he was still in Rhys' presence, but under that name... "I led him through a corridor that the faculty uses. He told me he was a theatre student, and that he was taking a film class. We started seeing movies together." He held up the ticket stubs for Damian's perusal. Since recognizing Rhys' and Damian's face as one in the same, he found the disconnect between the pair as deeply disturbing. The effects of corruption were indeed staggering.
"I can also say that Rhys tried to break into a door before." He withdrew the student ID and showed the disturbed edge. "And that he missed London. He carried British pounds, but not enough to spend on a trip there. My guess is it's sentimental. He was also well off - the wallet is a high-quality leather that I haven't seen in stores. He spent a lot of money but he kept his transactions to cards." Shale offered the bank cards as well. "They're worn. His parents were apparently controlling; I suspect they wanted to track his transactions."
Shale looked through the remaining cards. The library card, too, was worn. Flipping past that, Rhys kept gift cards to expensive men's apparel stores. "He was very conscientious about how he presented himself. If it was taste or motive, he didn't say."
He handed the wallet back to Damian. "Your posture was more honest than his." He left it at that.
"Sit." He gestured outward toward the empty cushion on the sofa. "I'll try to explain what this is, but there's no parallel in this culture that I've seen." Carefully he picked out three bones of seemingly formless shape.
"All the bones here are real. It's believed that when the hand is attached to the body, it's under the influence of one soul alone. But once it's no longer a part of that body, it's open to any influencing soul. Most people use bones from dog's paws, or coyote feet, or any mammal they can hunt. But they're not considered very accurate, because the animal is not intelligent. It's believed that intelligence 'soaks' the bone, too.
"These bones are from humans, so they're supposed to be highly accurate." Shale picked up one of the finger bones to compare to his own. "As long as you have these three bones, you roll with any finger bones you have. For different animals, there's different 'necessary' bones. For humans, it's these three wrist bones. There's a process to throwing them for a result. Do you want to try?"
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Posted: Sun Nov 15, 2015 7:08 pm
A theater student, chatty enough to have engaged a stranger and made a friend. He took the ticket stubs, considered - all older movies, which bespoke an interest in the classics over more modern fare. Enough of one that he wanted to share it with someone else. He took a moment to glance at Shale - and to wonder of Rhys had thought of him the same way Damian did. If movies and whatever else had been a useful excuse to spend time with someone handsome and interesting.
Questions Shale could not answer - questions Damian didn't even dare to ask.
It still painted an interesting picture - rebellious enough to have a fake ID and to have used his student ID to get into somewhere he wasn't supposed to be, but cowed enough to confine his transactions to monitored bank cards. Those, too, were turned over, to examine the signature on the back. He could recognize it, distantly, as his own handwriting, and yet had no memory at all of signing them. Or of using them, despite all the wear.
"I wonder if they still watch the accounts," he mused, idly. Were they still waiting for him to reappear? Did they expect that a charge would pop up somewhere far away? What did parents so controlling they kept that tight a leash on their son's spending imagine had happened when he disappeared along with a decent sized chunk of their money?
Any man who had grown his hair out to be as long as he was tall was conscious of his appearance, Damian thought, but he kept the comment to himself. However bizarre this was for him - and it absolutely was, to hear Shale evaluate him with a surprising level of familiarity -- "This must be absolutely bizarre for you," he said, a note of sympathy in his voice.
He had tried not to press or ask too many questions, but the comment about posture made him curious. It seemed an odd - perhaps ironic - comparison, because t was very much unlikely that Rhys had been lying to Shale; Damian's existence was a lie. "More...honest?" He asked.
When invited, he moved to sit, and listened interestedly to the presented explanation. There was no judgement, only curiosity - Shale's beliefs were different from his own, and perhaps a bit morbid by usual standards (but as Ploutonion, Damian had been completely comfortable in a catacomb full of skeletons, so perhaps his standard of morbidity was very different) but that didn't make them wrong.
"That's fascinating," he said, without an ounce of hesitation or hedging, when Shale was finished. "Yes, I would very much like to try."
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Posted: Wed Nov 18, 2015 1:16 am
"Likely. Their son disappeared. If he's lying now, he might use the card again and they could find him. If he's dead, someone else might have stolen the cards off the body. Either way, it's better to look." He wondered how the family dealt with the sudden disappearance - if they knew and expected Rhys to be gone and out of contact for a time, or if there grew a certain unease about his lack of contact, or if they rejoiced in the parting of a troublesome family member. Shale couldn't say; he never met Rhys' parents. He wouldn't know how to, most likely.
When Damian made his comment, shale nodded. "I have been personally involved in three corruptions. One was a personal friend, one was you, and one was a senshi I encountered several times. This is the first time I've known both sides to the same person - and there's nothing like it." In most of the situations, he had little interaction with the end result, and while he preferred to have a more active role in these new recruits' lives, time and resource management may not allow it. "I knew about memory loss and need of a new life. I knew it would be the same body, same basics. But you're different somehow. Subtly, but it's there. Like..." How could he frame it where Damian and Rhys could've understood it? "Two different people reading the same script. There's differences there. Changes in enunciation. It's the same with looking at you before and you after."
Shale reached for the paintbrush on the table, swirled it in the paste, and brushed the excess off on the top of the lid. "Give me your hand." He held his out while Damian continued.
"Over the course of your life, you learn what to hide and what to change. This takes years of feedback." He accepted the hand, palm upward, and started on painting a highly deliberate design onto the skin. The paste must have been mixed with a dye, for it maintained vibrant color even when spread thin. "When I look at most people, they walk a certain way. Or talk a certain way. And it's contrived based on that feedback. But you don't have that feedback anymore. You don't remember as much of it, or any of it. I can't tell." The design spread to fingers, and finally reached the tips for as blacked as they should be. Shale did not stop during this process. "There are times when you think about it, but there are times when you don't. Like when I ask you to pass a tea bag from the other side of the kitchen. You don't present yourself in any particular way."
Shale finished the process, checked his handiwork, and gestured toward the bones on the table. "Gather them in your left hand, then shake in your right. The paste will come off on the bones. Then toss them onto the table." I'll try to read what I remember. It would prove a challenge for someone so far removed of it.
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 12:18 am
Damian nodded. "Well, if I ever had any intention of using those, I certainly don't now." He wrinkled his nose distastefully, briefly. He had expected to find them cancelled, but bringing in overbearing parents and possible law enforcement attention sounded like a far, far worse thing than just a declined card.
It was interesting, to hear how corruption had rendered him different - how the loss of the balance of his life experience had left him changed. (Not less, which was what he had expected - to hear that the change had diminished him, somehow. But no, just...different.) He wondered if changes in mannerisms or in perception were because of the loss of his memory, or glamour, or some strange mix of both - and there really wasn't an empirical way to know. But it was easy to imagine - no two people would play the same character the same way, there were too many varying interpretations of motive or attitude.
And besides, Rhys had been a full person, and not a desperate cobbling-together of whatever Damian thought would get him farthest in the moment.
"I never cease to be surprised by what magic can do," he said, as he extended a hand on request. "Carry us to other planets, give us increased strength and speed, and apparently turn us into entirely different people in a literal sense."
It was almost alarming, to think too hard about. To consider how much more the loss of his memories had taken from him. It wasn't just the experiences - it was everything they had meant. But was that necessarily a bad thing? Shale read him as more open, more honest - perhaps simply more comfortable. "Whatever's left, it's all subconscious - or more subconscious," he said. His eyes were on what Shale was painting on his hand, trying to interpret the design, though he supposed that with no knowledge of the culture Shale was raised in it would be well and beyond him. Still, it was interesting to watch take shape. "Mostly I gave up on worrying too much about how you thought of me." He said it lightly and idly, as much as he could make it. It was also totally untrue; he was intensely concerned about how Shale perceived him. He just tried not to let it affect hoe he behaved, because he didn't want to act like a lovestruck schoolgirl. Perish the thought.
Shale was, it seemed, a talented reader of body language - it was lucky, Damian supposed, that most of what he did was built on truth, or Shale might well have sussed him as a liar long ago.
He nodded along with Shale's directions, and followed them carefully when actually given the chance to. He took it entirely seriously - there was no reason not to. The bones were scooped in his left hand and shaken in his right - gentler than he would have handled traditional dice - and then cast onto the table with similar care. He was curious to see what Shale might read out of them - and how accurate it might be.
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Posted: Sat Nov 21, 2015 8:53 am
"You keep looking at your corruption as a net loss," Shale pointed out coolly. "If I thought the same, I would say I 'lost' my old life when I moved here. You can argue they're not the same, but I would say it doesn't matter." He was quiet for a time while he watched Damian touch the bones. He did so either reverently or delicately - and Shale expected that he thought they might break if gripped too hard. "You call it erasing because you cling to the past. What you have now is a separate set of circumstances. You were chosen to move beyond what you had and do more - but you choose the past that you can't remember. There's no point. It's gone. But you are no less alive than you were before - and no less a person, despite what you think you're missing."
Shale leaned forward with elbows braced on knees while he looked over the set of bones and their placement. He looked at how they lay upon the design etched into the paper, surely, but he looked to the seemingly random splotches and spatters from the blackberry paste. He stared a long time, knuckles folded under his chin, as he tried to decipher. It wasn't his innate talent, he knew - his brother held the latent skill for that.
The bones spanned around the lunate in a tight arc, and the blackberry paste trailed away from it. He recognized that foremost. "Most of your energy goes to the cerebral. That wasn't the case in the past, but it's a recent path." He paused, then frowned. Explanation proved more difficult than he anticipated. "'Recent' isn't... We use recent contextually. But I can't predict what 'recent' is from this because I don't know anything about the soul involved. Or you. There's no context." And its interpretation was imperfect as well; he reminded himself that souls only react to a projected scent. It was considered possible to mislead the soul, which diminished the practice to an almost ceremonial use only in recent years.
The navicular bone looked stranded, somewhere to the far left. Its position on the paper indicated that it sat upon a bold circle. "There's not balance in your life, but... Either there was or it's needed. There's a lot of ways to read this. This bone is considered the boat because of how it's shaped, and the boat stands for a balance between cerebral or outside the body, and basal or inside the body. And this bone relates to the other two geometrically and metaphorically. Its current place, geometrically, says it's sequestered. Where it exists in the context of the paper suggests 'great presence' - which can be a need for it, or a demand from your life which isn't the same, or that it held precedent in the past. These lines don't have time indication and it's discouraged to read the future from these, because it doesn't make sense, so I can't say balance will become important. The bone's place metaphorically suggests that you're knowingly holding your life balance captive, but it can also mean that your basal and balance tendencies are bringing your cerebral tendencies down toward linear importance. A lot of this relies just as much on the teller's reading of the person as the soul's. I was never good at it. That's my brother's talent."
The triquetrum sat at an opposite side of the paper than the navicular, with a stuttering series of paste marks trailing it. Bones sat nearby, but none angled toward it. "This triangular bone is your basal self. It represents fear, desire, and satisfaction. It's the hardest to read because there's a lot of interplay in how it's positioned, where it exists in the triangle between the three bones, how the finger bones relate to its planes and angles, how it exists on the paper, and how the entire map frames out. I can't tell you what that says." He admitted the failure plainly, but it irked him nonetheless. Personal failure frustrated when he proved far more invested in these activities than his brother ever did, and yet Slate was the one with a knack for it.
"I can try to teach you how to read the map. Usually it's more useful if the person who threw the bones reads the results. The participants only arrange it in the user's context."
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Posted: Tue Nov 24, 2015 10:51 am
"I..." Damian started to protest - there were plenty of arguments to make that he had lost. But in truth, it wasn't fair to say that, and he couldn't even honestly claim the choice had been taken away from him, because it hadn't. He had sought out Laurelite, had submitted himself to corruption, knowing what it would mean. He had given up his old life. That Shale didn't know that wasn't relevant. He shook his head, the tiniest bit, feeling color rise in his cheeks. "Perhaps I do dwell on it too much." And perhaps Damian the actual forced convert would have argued more, but really, he had no interest in lying to Shale or furthering his ruse with him more than he absolutely had to.
It was especially hard to want to when he was trying to ignore that something warm was settling in his chest. It was silly that something as simple as simple as Shale insisting he was no less than he had been before could make him feel that way. That he knew it was silly didn't stop it from happening.
He redirected his focus, instead, to the spread of bones on the map, and to Shale's explanation of meaning. It wasn't fair to ask him to do this, Damian suspected, given that he was missing critical chunks of context. And yet still, there were insights he could pull from it. An outward focus, a lack of balance in his life. Both of those things, in context, could be said to be true. It was easy to pull meaning out of that, to relate it to the horrendously unbalanced mess that was his life as a Negaverse officer, to his own insistence on worrying more about what other people thought than what was good for him.
"Even if it isn't a complete reading, you've still given me plenty to think about." He said, and if he scooted just a little closer, it was so he could see the map better. Absolutely. "I would love if you taught me how," he said. Perhaps most people would have dismissed it, but when magic was undeniably and literally real, Damian saw no reason to assume out of hand that its less...dramatic applications had no merit. It was a worthwhile exercise regardless, if only for it necessitating a focus on the self for a time when considering the results.
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Posted: Fri Nov 27, 2015 7:51 am
Shale did not mind, or even truly consider, Damian's quick scoot toward him. He did, however, glance in his roommate's direction suspiciously. "Are you being facetious?" Damian admitting that Shale 'gave him a lot to think about' sounded suspiciously similar to sarcasm. Shale still wasn't well-versed to identifying it, but he felt he had a better handle on it now than he did when he first moved to the city.
Shale cleared his throat, then started on the explanation. "All the lines on this map are painted for the type of reading. There are different ways to paint them, and you can make them up if you're good at this, but it's usually easier to start with the templates. They represent ley lines in your life. Depending on the type of bone that lands on these lines and its location, it can tell you how important that aspect was in your life. That's usually read in conjunction with the grouping of the rest of the bones to indicate its presence. Since this bone is so far from the rest, I usually read that as neglected or unnecessary.
"Most of the reading is considered timeless. That doesn't mean static. This map is a snapshot of some point in your life between now and when you were first born. Usually it's closest to now - I've only seen one map that was the early years of someone's life, and I've seen many of these. But, you do get minor indications of time. All the blackberry smudges are indications of time - they are not large spans, but the trail represents the progression of these traits through this part of your life. This is how someone can say that you used to be impulsive and now have more control over it, for example.
"It's also important to know what the 'minor bones' are for. These bones are your fine measures - they relay the interconnectedness of these traits, how you've developed them, and your personal preferences for them. I used to have a book on this..." Shale trailed off to crane his neck toward the kitchen, expecting to find some indication of the guide, but found nothing more than empty counter space staring back at him.
Finally he returned his attention to Damian for a last comment. "You can read in different orders, but I prefer to do bone position first, then the template, then the paste. There are different readings that require you to read in different orders, but I've forgotten them." Closing his eyes, he rubbed his brow.
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Posted: Mon Nov 30, 2015 2:03 am
Dami looked startled at the accusation. "No," he said, "not at all." He found himself mentally rechecking his tone - he certainly hadn't intended to come across facetiously, but... "I apologize if I sounded that way." Better to apologize anyway, for an unintended offense.
He leaned in with obvious interest, however, when Shale actually started on the explanation, resting his elbows on his thighs and his chin on his hands. He was going to end up with blackberry paste on both hands, probably, but that would come off. Violet eyes followed the lines on the map as Shale explained their purpose, nodding along a little. There wasn't much room to comment, or interject, which was fine - better to just listen anyway.
It came together in a single picture, really - the whole map, and the bones cast on it, meant to capture a moment in a person's life. A piece in the puzzle of self-reflection, he supposed, which was something he tended to avoid. It tended to be an unpleasant and uncomfortable process, for him.
He distinctly perked at the mention of a book on the subject. "If you happen to find the guide again, I would be interested in reading it." And he hoped it came across as sincerely as intended. "And I appreciate you taking t e time to teach me," because that absolutely needed to be stated. Shale could as easily have brushed him off. Probably easier than actually walking him through this, when it was obviously something of an exercise in frustration.
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Posted: Thu Dec 03, 2015 2:18 pm
Umber nodded his assent at Damian's claim of wanting to see the book. He considered it a fair trade alongside Damian's wallet - or Rhys' as the case had been. Which reminded him.
"There's one more thing," he started as he leaned in to start cleaning up the bones. Several needed to be washed if he wanted to place them back in their respective containers. These he swept to the side, and the rest found their way back into the jar that held them. "But I made your necklace a long time ago. It's made for holding blood." The paper, now clear of bones, was crumpled into a ball easily. Blackberry paste was recapped with the brush sitting atop it; he would clean it soon, as surely as he would with the bones.
"But that's a story for another time. You've probably had enough." And even if Damian didn't, Shale found this much speech a little trying.
Shale stood afterward, collected the jars into one hand, and carried all the accoutrements in a precarious manner toward the kitchen. Luckily they remained with him instead of on the floor, for at least the two jars proved much too fragile for a fall. The brush jutted from his teeth at an angle. He retired the items to the counter in a jumble and started working on the blackberry-touched bones so that he might replace them in the container for the night. "I should thank you for showing me your journal. It's been useful." And entirely unsettling, for he would not have guessed that Rhys Banner was Ploutonion at some point. The revelation added a curious mix of associations to his roommate that would require deep reflection for his personal feelings. Currently he only felt very strange, and slightly betrayed.
The bones were rinsed, the jar capped, and the brush cleaned of paste. Each of these items found their homes quickly. "If there's nothing else Rh-" he paused to sigh at himself, "Damian, we should go to bed. It's getting late."
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Posted: Tue Dec 08, 2015 12:03 pm
Damian stood up to help, but hesitated briefly - which was long enough for Shale to scoop the entire thing up himself. Probably for the best, since there might be some kind of procedure to cleanup he wasn't aware of and he wasn't exactly eager to accidentally screw something up when things had gone so well so far.
He looked a little surprised, at the revealed purpose of his necklace. There was obviously more to the story, and particularly, he was painfully curious why Shale had given it to Rhys. (It was still sort of hard to accept that Rhys was him; probably always would be.) "I would like to know, but yes - another time." He could accept that.
"And I'm glad it could help you." Or something. It wasn't as if handing over a wallet he had no intention of using was much of a sacrifice - and he supposed if there was anyone he was going to trust with his old identity, it would be Shale. It didn't feel like an invasion of privacy or anything like that, not when it wasn't his life anymore.
He bit the inside of his cheek, considered briefly - and decided there were worse things he could do, probably. He took a few steps over, rested a hand on Shale's shoulder, and leaned in to briefly press lips to his cheek. A bad decision, all around, probably, but ideally Shale wouldn't read too much into it.
"Goodnight," he said, and he was already stepping away, and sort of praying that Shale's response was neutral rather than negative. It had probably been too much, a liberty taken too far. Oh well, it was done.
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