Susannah had a confession lurking in the shallow depths of her heart. She didn’t actually like coffee all that much. She was more focused on the dessert side of things, but having no drinks on her menu would be weird, and coffee just seemed like the thing to do, when opening a café.

It smelled nice, it could have many fun things added to it, art drawn in its foam, all of which was supremely fun, and Susannah further acknowledged that tiramisu was likely invented by a goddess.

She had yet to find a combination she liked to drink, however. She could grudgingly choke it down for the caffeine, on occasion, but that was all.

Charmony was a coffee aficionado. A roast bean juice addict. A madman who memorized her drinks menu in thirty minutes, most of them without any visual demonstration. In under an hour he achieved the soul dead intuition of someone who had been a barista for a decade. More than that, Charmony wanted to experiment. Mix flavors. Make drinks that were more suited to the city.

Susannah was all for it. It had already been proven to her that she needed to change her ways for the new environment. Adaptation was integral to survival in the wilds, and so too, it seemed, in the city. If Charmony had ideas, and they worked, he could do whatever he wanted.

With that being said, Charmony also needed to learn some basic baking, just in case. Simple stuff. Maybe some decorating work.

With the earlier coffee miracle, Susannah was perhaps expecting too much from him.

“No! No, no, no!”

Saying that everything was on fire was an exaggeration, but boy howdy was it trying to get there.

“How did you even do this?” Susannah frantically scrabbled through her kitchen, looking for an extinguisher. She still had some things to unpack, and had completely blanked on fire surpressing equipment being some of it. After all, when she set things on fire it was intentional. “I stopped paying attention for a minute, maximum.”

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“I’m so sorry!” he sounded like he was on the verge of tears. Or an anxiety attack. “It was on fire in the oven, and I opened it, and—”

“Aha!” Susannah pulled a talisman from the utensil drawer. She had no idea how it ended up there, nor why she got the compulsion to check the drawer there.

“Hold still.” She waved the talisman in the direction of the fire. It was a flimsy piece of paper, slightly crumpled, but the ink on it held. It sucked all the fire away in a thin vortex and loud pop, then crumbled to ash. “I’ll need to buy more of those. Are you all right, Charmony?”

Charmony had sat himself on the floor, and was shaking. His head was bowed over, held in his hands.

It seemed Charmony was not all right.

Susannah awkwardly sat herself down in front of him. “You’re, uh, still hired, if that’s what you’re worried about. Reminded me I needed to set up the safety stuff, for when an inspector somes around, really. Nice job, Charmony!” Her dull, forced enthusiasm on the last line drew forth a smile.

“No harm done, though we’ll put a pause on baking for today and go over how to use the register? It’s really easy.”

“I’m... cursed,” he whispered.

Susannah wasn’t sure if that was an admission to literally being cursed or dramatics, so she said nothing.

A minute passed.

Then another.

When it became apparent that Charmony was also not going to talk, she said, “Okay.”

Charmony slowly looked up from his hands. It was a motion not unlike a chick in a nest looking up for the sun, blind, top heavy and wobbly, uncertain of the future.

“I’m... not fired?”

“Despite the fire, no, you’re not. No kitchen without supervision, though.” It was hard enough getting an employee in the first place. He was good at coffee. He would stick with coffee.

“Deal.”

Thankfully, the register went much better.

Charmony knew how to count, and telling people fixed numbers of money to give him in return for goods was a very simple concept. Taking an order was likewise easy.

Customers came in. Susannah serviced them while Charmony observed.

Then she handled most of them while he worked the register.

By the time his shift was over Susannah was completey confident in his barista skills for tomorrow. No comment on his ability to bake.