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At the mention of food, Lenila’s stomach immediately responded in kind, vouching its approval for the idea of obtaining sustenance. Her heart, though, was still stuttering in wild fight-or-flight attention as a result of how long — ages, it had seemed, even if it had only been moments — that Jalase’s eyes had lingered on the empty space of his desk. Finally, when she tempered her pulse, her teeth pinched at her lower lip, then released it.

“I…” ‘…my treat.’ She nodded quickly. “I haven’t much on me. Pa isn’t so quick to trust I won’t spend coin wild if he gives it to me. But if you’re alright t’ buy, I think I could eat a limbara at this rate. We eat right often enough, o’course, but I’m spoiled by me pa’s cookin’, and we haven’t had the chance for what feels to be a proper meal in ages. If ya know anyplace, and you’re sure the shop’ll keep itself, I’ll follow your lead. Pa says he wouldn’t trust any o’ the big city folk not to rob a good man blind.”

Lenila supposed in the end, she couldn’t have asked for better fortune: coin and free food. It made her wonder for a moment, though, as good fortune often did, if it wasn’t really too good to be true. He’d seen her stole the coin. He knew she was a girl, and that she was a liar. He was only biding his time to trick her off down an abandoned road somewhere or nearer to the constable's office where she would be locked up and punished for sure and perhaps not even be fed.

It was an awful thought to be sure.

She kept it tucked down, though, lingering at the nape of her spine in warning while she kept an outward bounce to her step and Jalase’s pace. She could always run, still, after all. And she was quite a good runner, and small enough to slip into spaces fat old constables couldn’t. She would be fine, so long as Jalase did not grab her, and if he did, she could scream. She was good at that too, and a young girl’s high pitched scream did seem to startle most people and turn enough heads to give her the moment’s time she needed to dislodge herself and split into the churning crowds.

So really, she oughtn’t fear too much, just be ready, and in the meantime, hope for a good meal. There was no harm in hoping and imagining, and as they got closer to it, the smell made it all the more real and possible feeling. Her grin became genuine, giddy with childish good humor and anticipation.

“Oh, I love kebabs, I do.” She was fairly sure she’d never tasted one in her life, but they smelled and looked so interesting that it almost felt true to say anyway. She loved them already, just for being there and smelling so good so near to her. “There’s a wee small rickety tuck of a place not so greatly far from where Pa works and you can get a half dozen sticks for just few coppers. Pa says I’d get so round eatin’ there he’d need to roll me anywhere I went if I didn’t burn so much energy talkin’ and lettin’ my feet take me places they shouldn’t.”

Len had never been one to exercise a great deal of patience when it came to—well, anything. But particularly not food, other than the necessary sort of ‘patience’ that came with waiting for an opportunity to even attain food not yet available for her. Thus, the opportunity not only to eat but to choose food and as much as she could on someone else’s budget—what a great and terrible opportunity it was.

How much could she ask for and not have it sound ridiculous?

There was only so much, unfortunately, that her small stomach — and hands, for that matter — could hold at one time, and she knew that to be true, particularly when it was unused to having especially much stuffed into it ever. So, she at least attempted to be ‘modest’ in her request, with modesty in this case meaning the max she assumed she could realistically down in a sitting without losing it to upchuck. She was halfway through one of them, chipmunk cheeked and saucer eyed when her company suggested they move back to his shop.

She nodded hastily, and followed in his wake without further pause. Only the heat of the food forced her to keep anything approaching a moderate pace of consumption. Between swallows, she held more snippets of conversation with the boy. He had paid for her lunch, after all, and — unbeknownst to him — her next several, likely. It seemed she owed him at least that much, and they parted on pleasant terms.

That, added to the fact that his family took up shop directly under her unpaid for and unofficial new ‘abode’, had Lenila expecting as they parted that it wouldn’t be the last she saw of him. She wasn’t wrong.