It's a joke, it isn't--if she was ever the type to worry about a few broken nails, she isn't now, sitting out in the cold with lightning scars down her arm and a dead friend. He favors her with half a smile, his own teeth starting to show. Some of it's just her, herself, and some of it is slotting that into his idea of Ren, and what Ren responded to in people.

"I can't say I know everything Kate puts in that bread," he offers, but she has a point. There had been more than one time someone had explained a danger to him, then shrugged off its existence with no idea how to handle it, or no will to try until the snow cleared. Now that it had, lightning kept them at bay. Soon it will rain, then be too hot--any number of excuses to spend another day inside, reading Casey the same three books until he didn't need any help.

"Everyone handles the stress differently," he adds, some well of forgiveness springing eternal from him. "But I'm not worried about my nails if you aren't."