This might be a sticking point of disagreement, but Juneau didn’t feel like prodding at Casimir’s temper. Still, it surprised her that someone with Casimir’s skillset didn’t have more curiosity over the workings of the Kossith technology. Perhaps some things were better left to the depths. Casimir might think the same of the ring she had hurled into the murky waters where the ship stuttered to a dead stop. It was likely the ring was forgotten and left to be buried by layers of silt over time, but a gnawing sort of anxiety deep within Juneau reminded her that all things surfaced eventually. She merely hoped it wouldn’t be in her current lifetime.
Or the next. How lucky to be able to count on a next. But even that came with a bite of guilt–Casimir, as faultless in his association with the dark as she had been, could no count on such a luxury.
“What’s wrong with your face?” she asked, the corner of her nose wrinkling, but there was good humor in return in the edges of her features. “Maybe I do,” she argued, her face twisting into its usual half frown. And she did, but nothing that seemed attainable. She remembered so little about the Elvhen woman who had restored her soul that trying to track her down would have been impossible, and she doubted Casimir wanted to hear the tales of her suffering. Even if he did, she would insist to him what she had insisted to many before: she was lucky, she made it out more alive than she had been going into the affair. She doubted many others could say as much.
“Trouble like what?” she asked, a devious little grin spread across her pale, freckled face. Juneau had never been much of a fighter before. She could manage, she could flee, and she was crafty, but she hadn’t been especially strong. A Vuldak in control of its faculties on the other hand? Well, that was another story. “I don’t suppose you’d like to see a Vuldak up close, would you?”
Often his mind was conflicted on the puzzle of the Kossith ship, the Kossith as a whole, and his breezy demeanor on such subject was out of character, if not to say - it was a glaring error of how he felt given lack of results. "When I know something of interest, you know I'll tell you," that was clearer, if not disappointing for her and thus himself. He'd a very specific person to ask, but one such person had been impossibly indeterminate when it came to their whereabouts, especially after a certain soul breathing path was attempted.
Casimir had, most importantly, noted how worry seemed to find him where Juneau was concerned, a trait - a feeling - he was not especially fond of, but one which lent to such frustrations all the same. The spirit - if one could call it that - which cured her, the ring which - and Casimir was unsure what would be more chilling - was either sunk to the depths of the Azure sea or had been found by another; all pieces of a frustrating puzzle related to the Kossith who had seemingly retreated so perfectly. Casimir did not appreciate this, the way the pieces all fit together so perfectly; which only meant something far more unsavory would come to pass. That was what he'd come to learn from all this madness after all.
When her face twisted into such coined Juneau Frown all Casimir could do was exhale a dead breath of humor, even if it felt wrong. "I'm uneasy over what came to pass and it's a feeling which I do not like," he was unsure if he'd stated this aloud more for his sake than hers, but Juneau was one of the few, on an impossibly short list, whom he did trust to say such feelings aloud to.
"But such feeling pales in comparison to what I dread now - like the worlds been split open," this comment clarified what loomed on the horizon, what Darkness crept and swarmed them still. "I'd never ask you to put your life on the line, but I think now more than ever we need that vuldak side of you." This was an agreement to her teasing inquiry, something which Casimir took seriously.
