He's loud and obnoxious and he bumbles through life like an elephant tripping into a china shop, which makes people get annoyed with him but also makes them really underestimate him. They think he's just an idiot who ran into some numenera that gave him superhuman abilities, which is, you know, true as far as it goes, but that's not all he is. And he often uses that to his advantage. So people were more loose-lipped around him than they probably should have been, and he heard more than he should have.

You see, Pernth Bay is an interesting place. There's this way all places are alike and lots of ways every place is unique. Pernth Bay is similar to Sagus, in that they also have an Underbelly—they call it The Cove, because it's really a very pretentious place overall—but it's not quite like Sagus, in that it's not the poor and downtrodden who go there, or not mostly them. Pernth Bay's underworld is more of a den of vice for the rich and powerful, a place where they can indulge in their wicked pleasures. And that's in sharp contrast with the surface view of the city, which has one of the most functional and competent governments Tahir's run into, and he's run into a fair share of them.

But, well, obviously it's corrupt, right? What story of adventure would have such an extended sidebar about a place's government if it were just purely good?

Well, actually! As far as Tahir could determine, the government was pretty decent! The way this story goes, instead, is that they're locked in a sort of mutually assured destruction situation with the crime lords in their Cove. And some people transit between both spaces like the difference is immaterial to them, and if you guessed that the rich benefactor who lost his jewel is one such person, you guessed right.

(Tahir's whole demeanour and body language changes, as he's telling that story. He's still animated and excitable, but it seems a lot more purposeful, the way he weaves the story into something that feels almost alive. He's doing something, there, he's paying attention to the girl's reactions, what seems to interest her and what she doesn't care about, he's capturing her attention when it starts to drift and he's countering the voice of the ghost trying to possess her almost as if he can hear her, even though it's just cold reading.)

Not to get too bogged down in details about the political situation in Pernth Bay, the most important bit is that it turns out that that rich man's "jewel" was a person. A boy, quiet and apathetic and somehow incredibly charming. Lots of people seemed to like him even though whenever they talked to Tahir about this boy they didn't seem to quite understand what they liked about that boy. What everyone could agree on, though, was that the boy was an incredibly talented painter.

And his paintings were special, too. Not only were they beautiful, but looking at them could transport you somewhere. Not physically, you were still there, but your mind went elsewhere, you could feel everything the boy was trying to convey, you could see more colours and images than were actually on the canvas, they were all around you and in you. Tahir himself got to experience one such painting and it's like nothing he can describe.

IT WAS VERY UNCOMFORTABLE we felt as if the painting was looking directly at us WE'RE NOT MEANT TO BE PERCEIVED especially by inanimate objects

The boy couldn't paint on command, though. He only painted when he was inspired, when the muse struck him, and more precisely when he found a "model" that fit his very specific criteria. But still, that rich man liked to display the boy's paintings, and he paid for all of the boy's living expenses even when the boy could be months between paintings. There was something else there, too, it wasn't just the artistic appreciation, but Tahir couldn't figure out what it was.

So, the boy had vanished. It wasn't too uncommon for him to go a couple of weeks without being seen but it had been far too long and the man was afraid something must've happened to the boy, or one of his enemies must've kidnapped the boy to get to him. Except no one had demanded ransom or made any threats, and by the time Tahir got there the man was grasping at straws, desperate.

Tahir is loud and obnoxious and everyone underestimates him, and so he can get places by just looking sufficiently incompetent. And he found the boy, almost by accident.

The boy had been kidnapped, but not by any enemies of the rich man; he had been kidnapped by people who wanted to use his painting talents for nefarious ends. What ends, exactly, Tahir never found out. There was clearly some strange numenera at work, but the boy himself didn't seem to know what it was, he'd just always been able to paint like that. He said he'd heard his kidnappers talk about getting somewhere, reaching someplace, but in real life, unlike in stories, villains don't often monologue in front of their victims and explain their plans in detail. And since they clearly were the villains, well, Tahir dealt with them.

And then he asked the boy,

"Now that I've rescued you, do you want to be rescued again?"

The boy looked confused and said,

"...what?"

And Tahir elaborated:

"It seems as though you may be a rich man's pet! That must be uncomfortable, right? Do you wish to leave his grasp?"

To which the boy replied, eloquently:

"...I don't care."

And it did not seem like the boy was lying or fooling himself, so Tahir returned the boy to the man who kept him like a pet. This story ends less satisfactorily than he'd hoped, and he still feels like he was missing something, but if the boy himself didn't see a problem with his arrangements, Tahir did not think it was his place to intervene.

"I've been meaning to go back to Pernth Bay one of these days to go check on that guy but haven't gotten around to it yet."