Welcome to Gaia! ::

Lance watched her carefully.

"You have to take care of your slaves? The topside humans take care of themselves; they've even started rebellions. Although, maybe it would have been better to keep them stupid, but there are so many of them! What are your slaves like?"

He was trying to not cringe at the slave talk. Most of the people he knew were former slaves owned by his family.

"Hungry?" He asked Riasha as he pulled out money out of his bag. "Order yourself something."

His stomach was still growling. Where was his sandwich? He looked at the human girl and said, "The service here is slow, though."

"We have slaves by the thousands. They're hard to round up sometimes, but they work effectively enough." He raised his eyebrows. "You breed your slaves? How strange."

He pushed a bronze coin to Jóna for her to inspect. If she was baffled by metal currency, she would be more surprised to see the topsiders' wooden coins. He had to have one somewhere. He fished around in his pocket until his fingers hit the tree bark coin. He yanked it out of his pocket and slid it to Jòna.

"This is a topside coin," he said, pointing to the wood. "It's not as refined as our currency, but this is worth about a third of a Regal." He pointed to the bronze coin. "This is a Regal. It's our cheapest coin. From this particular cafe, this plus three more could buy you your steak."

He fished around for more coins. A black, metal coin was next. He continued, "This is a Lord coin. It's worth ten Regals. You could buy several meals with this."

Pulling out two more coins, he stacked them with the others. Pointing to the silver coin, he said, "This is a Lady coin. It's worth five Lords, and fifty Regals. You wouldn't use this to buy food unless you were feeding a village."

Tapping the gold coin, he said, "This is an Emperor. It's worth twelve Ladies, sixty Lords, and six hundred Regals. It's our biggest currency coin." He pushed the coins to Jóna to inspect.

"On each coin, there is a face of one of our past leaders. But I can't imagine you'd be interested in that."

"I assume your people are set up much differently than we are," Lance said with a shrug. "Interesting. Our slaves breed themselves. Although, technically they're not my slaves. I would consider them friends. I've freed many of them."

Lance played with an Emperor, and Dahlia bat around the wooden coin playfully with her paw. "Interesting," he murmured. "When you put it that way, it doesn't make much sense. But as you have said, that is the way it is."

"We don't choose who they breed with. They decide that for themselves," he said.

The caprese sandwich was placed in front of Lance, who immediately began inspecting the contents. Pesto sauce, tomato, spinach, mozzarella, and chicken. He bit into it. He sputtered at the spinach, and put the sandwich down.

"Understandable," he said.

He looked at the steak, then his eyes met Jona's. "What's that behind you?"

Lance pointed vaguely behind her.

While she looked around the cafe, Lance grabbed a chunk of steak off of her plate, shoved it down his throat, and put half of his sandwich on her plate.

"Keep looking," he said, his mouth full. "You'll see it, promise."

He greedily grabs another chunk of meat and eats it, hoping she doesn't catch him. Besides, he gave her half of the panini, so it was only fair.

"It's fair," he said. "But I'll order steaks for all of us!"

He grabbed the panini and dashed up to the counter, throwing the panini out. Dropping some coins on the table, he ordered two more steaks and potatoes. He came back a few moments later with two dishes full of food.

"Here," he said, putting the second steak on the table.

He took the other steak for his own, and immediately began chowing down.

Riasha had lost track of the conversation again. Instead she had been talking with the staff, wanting to know about everything on the menu, what all the machines were called, and what they did. She seemed to be pretty intent on asking a lot of questions. Most likely used to the appearance of strangers, the staff respond to her with various degrees of enthusiasm. Finally she actually orders something with the currency that Lance had given her. Leaning on the counter, she waits until it is ready and eventually comes back with her own food, which at first just looks like two breaded 'loaves' of meat with fries. Rejoining the other two, she sits down.

"Thank you so much," she says to Lance. "Though I don't feel quite right to take something from you and give nothing in return. That's just not the way of my people. Everything must be earned fairly."