While this was meant to be a distraction, Mira was genuinely curious and so she listened with undivided attention to the baker as he explained that flour actually came from wheat. Not flowers, like she'd initially thought. When Sparhawk came along and said that it was her birthday, there was a moment where Mira thought to correct him but then remembered that this was part of the plan. So, she simply smiled and bobbed her head. Needless to say the little girl's eyes were practically wide as saucers when the baker returned with some fresh pastries. "Thank you sir" she mimicked after Sparhawk as the pair were lead out. That went well. "Did I do alright?" Mira asked.

"Perfect." Sparhawk was grinning broadly. "Better than perfect, actually. You more than earned your share." He tore a bite from his delicious pastry before fishing out the coinpurse he'd stolen and jingled it.
"It's pretty heavy. I think we fished ourselves a sackful of gold, sister. Let's check it out when we get back. If we're seen with a lot of money people'll know we stole it."

So he led her away from the square and back towards his hideout. He'd just opened the window to let Mira inside when he heard a bad sound.
It was the growl of the beast. He turned, and there it was, the ugly, massive, filthy creature.

"He must smell the pastries." He told Mira. "Get inside and shut the window, now." He half lifted, half pushed her through the window and turned to face the beast again, it's fang-filled maw agape and hungry. Suddenly, it lunged, and two of them wrestled on the dirt, clawing, biting, and hitting aggressively.

Sparhawk had had a few bad run-ins with the beast, but the creature always gave up after he gave him a few good bruises. The same proved true this time around as well, but Sparhawk had several new injuries of his own now. Several scratches and tooth-shaped puncture marks on his arms and face, many of which were still bleeding by the time he finally tumbled through the window, but he seemed to be ignoring them, and somehow, he had managed to save his pastry, which he continued eating when he found Mira.

"That'll teach 'im." He said casually through a bite.

Mira was practically beaming with pride at Sparhawk's praise but her attention was soon drawn away by the pastry; it was demanding that she eat it. How could she resist? The little girl took a tentative bite out of it and was happy to discover that it tasted as amazing as it smelled. "That was fun" she commented, grinning childishly. Mira never was one to take things slowly and had wolfed it all down by the time they got back to Sparhawk's place. And then the dog came back.

The little girl was already climbing through the open window of the old structure; Sparhawk's nudge just sped up the process and she landed ungracefully onto her belly. At least this time it didn't hurt since she's anticipated the fall. She could still hear the scuffle outside. "Big Brother?" Mira stood up and looked out the window and was relieved to see Sparhawk was fine (for the most part anyways) and the dog was gone. She stepped aside and watched as he climbed in, then closed the window. "Ew, what if it was sick?" Mira had never witnessed the 'sickness of madness' before but she'd heard of rabies -although, she didn't really know what that was either. Mira turned around and padded over to the little hatch and pulled it open then hopped in.

Sparhawk shrugged as he followed her down the hatch.
"He's bitten me before and nothing happened, so. Now, let's see what we got." He sat himself down on the ground with purse in hand and dumped its contents on the floor in front of him. It was indeed mostly full of gold. Sparhawk grinned as he started counting it all out.
"Here you go, sister." He pushed her half of the day's earnings towards her, then dumped his own in a little box which appeared to hold all his savings.
"Now if you wanna be smart, you'll start saving all that for sometime when you really need it. There's plenty other ways to get food, so don't go wasting money on that. Money's for emergencies. That's what old man Dal says. I'll take you to see him. He pays me to do work for him sometimes. Might have something for you, too."

Perhaps this meant that Sparhawk was slowly building up an immunity to the ugly dog's germs? Mira wondered what would happen if this failed, and in her mind she pictured a few different outcomes; one being that Big Brother would eventually turn into a frothing werewolf. The little girl scrunched up her nose in disgust and shook her head. Ew. Hopefully that would never happen because she actually liked Sparhawk and the idea of locking him up in a cage and feeding him through bars sounded much to complicated her the little girl to wrap her head around. Thankfully Sparhawk began talking about a different subject altogether and Mira had to pay close attention to absorb what he was saying, quickly forgetting about her imaginary scenarios.

"Saving?" she parroted. Now that was something she categorized as a luxury, being that she couldn't afford to do it nor did she often find herself with enough coins in her possession to even consider the idea. In that case it seemed today was going to be her lucky day. Mira looked down at her share of the pile and pondered. "But where do I keep it?" Little knick-knacks or whatever she collected were one thing, but even at this age she knew that this was much more important and therefore would would require more effort than her usual hiding spots.

An idea popped into her head and Mira pointedly gestured to the little box Sparhawk had just stashed his coins into. "Can I put mine in there too?" Ironically, despite being able to comprehend the importance of currency, she completely missed why this would be a bad idea. Sparhawk was a still total stranger and who knew what he could be up to. And yet, Mira saw no problem with trusting him. "Please?" she added, trying not to forget her manners.

"No, sister, you need to keep yours seperate from mine. Ours could get mixed up. Hmm... Oh, here," Sparhawk said, rummaging around again. He found another tin, dumped out its contents, then handed it to her.
"Keep your money in there, and then hide it somewhere so no one else can find it."

Mira accepted the tin and started grabbing her coins by the handful to stuff them all in. "What's wrong with getting them mixed?" she curiously inquired. If they had both worked hard to earn this, didn't it therefore mean that it belonged to the both of them? By that logic it seemed to Mira that there was no point in wasting time by fussing over separating it.

"If you mix them up, then you won't know whose is who's," Sparhawk shrugged.
"If that happens, you might accidentally use my money, and then you'd have to pay me back. You don't want to owe people favors. That's what Old Man Dal says. He says it's good to have people owe you favors, but bad to owe people favors. We can go see him later today. If we go later in the day and work until it's dark, he might let us eat dinner, too."