Hal's fingers don't linger as he solders the necklace shut at your nape. It feels heavier than it should, more like a collar than pretty jewellery, and it's essentially shackling the two of you together. The alien robes you're both wearing rustle like sandpaper as they shift, though the fabric itself isn't rough to the touch.

"There," Hal mutters, dropping the cooling but still-hot metal against your skin, its twin already fastened around his neck. "All gussied up."

It symbolizes your union and should grant you entry into the Geklumen's inner cities. They're horribly traditional, those aliens.

By the time they finish puberty at the latest, Geklumen are expected to have found life partners. In the most literal sense of the word, because the Geklumen do everything in pairs. Eating, cleaning, sleeping, exercising, working, shitting, probably.

Centuries ago, it must have been a survival instinct—a necessity on a planet with as many hazardous wildfires and dramatic weather shifts as there are on Kleide. People survive better in numbers. Two heads think better than one. Two bodies endure, survive, better than one.

And if you reach adulthood without a pair? You become an unseen worker in their extensive tunnel logistics system—or you leave the cities. Whether by choice or force, Hal's still unsure.

As it is, Hal doesn't really give a rat's ass about the intricacies of Geklumen society. You're not on an educational trip. It's more of a retrieval mission.

You're meant to track down one—well, two, technically—of the Geklumen scholars, get them to decipher an artifact for the League. Quick in-and-out, if he's being optimistic. But Hal knows it hardly ever works out that way.

He tilts his head toward one of the shuttle's transparent panels, tossing the portable soldering iron onto the first available surface.

"We gotta sell it, remember. So don't ice me out when I get a little affectionate, hm?" Hal adds, drily.