[color=ed1c24][h3]Angel Ferrara[/h3][/color]

[color=ed1c24]"Was I...fired? Or did I just quit?"[/color]

This was a question that Angel Ferrara asked his traveling companion often. In the year that they'd known each other, in their journey south through Ishgar, most tenures with the restaurants that Angel had earned travel money with had ended in a fashion that could only be described as 'chicken-or-egg.' It suited Ferrara just fine. He had never put together much in the way of a resume or even much of a pitch for his services. He just kind of whipped up a soup-and-salad course and a quick entrée after the restaurant closed, and [I]ta-da[/I], they had themselves enough money to travel for a couple weeks. It was even fun more often than not; Angel was more at home cooking at inns than he was as a mage. 

Nobody tipped mages for birthday parties. Credit to Kaia for turning him on to [I]those.[/I]

Regardless of the method of loss of employment, it was gone - and this job had followed the trend in Fiore of giving the cooks kind of a crappy wage. Since that was the case, there was no point in sticking around to reminisce, so Ferrara was currently leading his blind sous chef to the center of town to find a nice bench and sort out the cash they'd made. When such a seat had been acquired, he gently helped Kaia sit down first - she never needed the assistance, but it was always polite - and sat down after her. Angel breathed quietly through his nose and wrinkled the button-shaped appendage slightly at how much different city air smelled than the familiar pine of a forest.

[color=ed1c24]"So."[/color] The cook pulled his hat down over his head, and two handfuls of the long, straight blonde hair that framed his face along with it. [color=ed1c24]"Let's start counting out mone--"[/color]

His gaze drifted to the sightless eyes of the dark-skinned girl beside him.

[color=ed1c24]"Oops."[/color]

Kaia's stare back was expressionless.

[color=ed1c24]"[I]I'm sorry,[/I] okay."[/color] His face wrinkled up at his sous chef and he resisted the urge to roll his eyes.[color=ed1c24] "Sometimes I forget."[/color]