Samuel had to laugh. Her own response was kinder, perhaps, than his own, but its meaning was no less evident. He picked up a nearby tray, emptied of its neatly cut squares of pita bread, and glanced at his reflection in its silver surface. His skin was deeply tanned, it was true; far deeper than it ordinarily might have been, giving him a bronzed and burnished appearance even a summer of nothing but surfing would have found difficult to provide. His hair seemed a bit shorter, more closely cropped as well. But these things were simple to explain away, as simple as they had been when he had noticed them in the privacy of his own home, while staring in the bathroom mirror with the fog of sleep still clouding his vision. It was a trick of the light, he had decided; he clung to this explanation even now, and looked back to his dining companions with a broad and boyish smile.
"These bruises," he announced, "look slightly less dark in my reflection. Although maybe they've just faded. It's been a few days since that ill fated open bar, after all. Still." He prodded at one dark smudge high across his cheekbone, feeling the answering prick of pain from the blow he'd taken in the fight. "If anyone wants to take a guess at what deity faded reflections of minor injuries makes me, have at it."