[ The inclination of another's head is something this one seems accustomed to. He does not insist it is not necessary, but rather takes the opportunity to let his eyes rest with implicit understanding upon the individual — the demon — before him. As Ryo Asuka, there would have been no such response, but Ryo Asuka is quiet. In time, these exchanges and these fleeting freedoms will be forgotten until they are wrested from the confines of the body they have borrowed, the memories they've molded to fit up against theirs. For now, the corners of Ryo's bright eyes crinkle with a kind of fleeting fondness. There’s no thank you, but it is implicit in the way he deposits his earnings and wares on one of the innumerable furnishings beside him. There’s a ghost of an action that doesn’t quite translate in this form, but the impression is there. It spans about his frame, almost as if he’d have shaken the blood from body with it. His head tilts. It is an opposing mirror. ]

I'm familiar with them, [ he hums, knowing full well that is not the question he's asked. He lifts a hand to skim the gore from his cheekbones with the backs of his own knuckles. They look swollen and bruised, but there’s no wince as he does so. His lips upturn. There is no viciousness in it, no dagger-like precision in the way they tip. ] These Araneans are not nearly so earnest. [ It's a pity, is the unvoiced sentiment. ] For all they've spoken about overcoming their rulers, they still follow them.

[ There’s a kind of gentleness, removed as much as it is attached, that rounds out the corners of his words. It touches on something that sits stark to what typically comes off Ryo’s tongue, the tone of this voice somehow more at home in this body than even Ryo's is. Like an artist that clears a patina of dirt from a pithos dug from the Earth, what stands before this man for the first time is the contents of its inscription, translated in part. ]