Cassi poured the drinks, and then set the bottle not where it had been, but on the desk between them, to the other side of those that stood empty. When Pollux drank, she mirrored the gesture. It still burned, but this time she was expecting it. It wasn't at all like drinking wine, the way she and Callidora did when they could get hold of it, but the burning did settle into that same pleasantly warm feeling. Comfort. That was how and that was why. She couldn't approve of it, not at all, but perhaps she understood it now a little better.
'Arcturus,' she said, with that small smile of hers, 'would likely fail to notice if you stood in front of him, bottle in hand. It is hardly his fault; he's awfully young and homesick as we said, and if this place seems frightful to us I can't imagine what he makes of it all. He isn't the issue.'
Leaning back in her chair, Cassiopeia regarded her brother for a moment, considering things. Why shouldn't she say what she thought? It could hardly do any harm; at worst he'd ignore it, which was likely what he was set to do anyway.
'If you started at home,' she told him, 'Irma would have stopped you. I'm not Irma and I shan't stop you, but I shan't say that it's pleasing to me that you're shut away in here and likely unhappy.'