Bran got out his wallet, extracted the Wishing Box business license and slid it through the gap in the glass. "I'd like to check the balance of this account and make a currency conversion," he said in English.
The girl, who Misha noticed had at least two sets of horns among her densly plaited hair, picked up the license, held it up to the light, gave a little nod, then turned back to Bran. "May I have your ID card please?"
Bran got it out and slid it over to her.
She checked it over then pulled out a form from her desk. "Since this is the first time this account is being accessed, I will need to get my manager to sign off on it. Please wait a moment." She rose from the counter and disappeared into the back.
Misha looked left and right along the counter and saw that nearly half the seats were unoccupied. No wonder it had taken so long to get served.
Then a thought suddenly occurred to him.
"Bran," he said in a shaky voice.
"Mm?"
"How do we make money?"
Bran gave him a funny look. "Through the Wishing Box," he said.
"Yes, but how do we actually get money? We didn't charge for anything! No price tags!"
Bran couldn't help laughing at his partner's bereaved expression. "You only just realised that now?" he couldn't help jibing.
Misha made an anguished squealing sound and Bran patted him on the shoulder.
"I'm just kidding," he said. "The paranormal works differently from the mundane. If a god gets prayed to, and they've set up their business properly, then that prayer will automatically get deposited into their account."
"What? Seriously? So…" Misha's eyes went round. "Wait, what do we get then? We're not a religion."
"No, we're not, thank God. No, what we get is gratitude. It's one of the Uncanny Currencies I was talking about earlier."
The horned girl returned with her manager in tow before Misha could gear up for another question and sat back down at her desk. Misha was surprised to feel waves of unease come from both her and her manager.
"Mr. D'Arcy?" said the manager. She was a tall woman with mottled green-blue skin and long white hair.
"Yes?"
"Welcome to our bank. We have tallied the contents of your account and printed it into a passbook," said the manager while the counter girl slid a small notebook through the gap.
Bran took it, opened it for a look, then also showed Misha the amount. Misha wasn't sure if it was a lot, but it certainly made him feel more secure to see all those digits.
Next, the horned girl slid over a form for the currency conversion and Bran filled in the amount to convert. She looked at her manager.
Misha had never worked in a bank but his time studying business at university, as well as conversations with his father, had given him a certain idea about how things worked. He looked between the counter girl and her manager. Had something gone wrong? Surely the manager was wanted elsewhere…
The girl tapped at her computer, an ancient looking thing, inserted the slip Bran had written on, then waited for another equally ancient machine to print something out on it. Once it had finished, she glanced at her manager then slid the slip back over to Bran and Misha's side of the glass.
"At the current conversion rate, that will be the number of Pearl City dollars you will receive. Do you still wish to proceed?"
Bran didn't reply. Instead, his face had gone pale.
Misha looked over his shoulder at the slip of paper. If this had been back when he'd first landed in Pearl City, the little dragon would not have been able to make heads or tails over the amount - was it a lot or not a lot? - but now that he'd gone many times to the market to buy groceries, he had a fairly good grasp for how much things were worth.
"That little?!" he exclaimed.
For once Bran didn't react but the people around, both at the counters and in the still long snaking line, did. Misha didn't even feel embarrassed. The converted cash amount was just that small.
He cleared his throat. "Is that normal?" he asked the girl who looked more and more like she was going to have a nervous breakdown.
"It's…" she stammered.
"It is outside of historic ranges," said her manager.
Misha looked to see how Bran was doing but he still looked to be offline. "Do you have a list of all the current exchange rates?" Misha asked the counter.
"We do," immediately replied the manager, pulling out a folded sheet of paper from her jacket pocket. There looked to be quite a few more in there.
"Do you have a historical chart?"
The manager gestured and the counter girl quickly pulled up a clipboard and slid it over.
Misha looked it over then got out his notebook, a pencil, and started to calculate.
Five minutes later, he ripped a sheet from his notebook and gave it to the counter girl. "Execute the instructions as listed," he said.
The manager took the paper from the counter girl then eyed Misha. "And you are…?"
"He's another signatory of the account," Bran said as though he'd just woken up. "You can do what he says."
"Very well. Gong-er, finish up these transactions. I need to help…" the manager's voice trailed off as she made a vague gesture towards the back of the bank. "Have a good day," she then added to Misha and Bran then left.
Another ten minutes later, Misha and Bran walked out of the bank with about three quarters of what Bran had been hoping to walk out with. Misha had just finished explaining how he'd hopped the amount through various different Uncanny Currencies to get a better rate when exchanging to gold then exchanging to Pearl City dollars.
Bran still looked confused, but he understood one thing.
"You're good at this," he said appreciatively. For a while there he'd been genuinely worried about their ability to live.
"Nah, I'm just glad I got to use my degree," Misha said with a laugh.
"I thought you studied business?"
"Yeah, but I took two finance courses in year one."
"Ah…" Bran did not know what it meant to take a course in 'finance' but he was glad that Misha had. That feeling he'd first felt when Misha had swooped in and saved him in the dream-Coil returned - that feeling of someone having his back. A feeling quite foreign to him.
"Still," said Misha, unaware of all the feelings Bran was having, "I'm really curious about what's going on."
"What's going on?"
"Well, if you look at the historical data, the exchange rate between Gratitude and HKD has always been pretty steady, almost as if they were pegged together or something, so to have a sudden change like this is weird."
"How sudden are we talking?"
"In the last few days."
Those words stabbed Bran right in the heart. If only he'd asked Misha to come own here earlier. But then again, Misha had needed time to process his father's sudden death, so Bran pushed aside his regret. Just treat the lost money as some kind of payment for something.
"Do you think I should have volunteered to deal with my father's funeral and all that?" Misha asked in a low voice. Apparently his mind had gone to a similar place as Bran's at the mention of 'a few days ago'.
"I think you made the right choice," said Bran. "From a safety standpoint, it's best to not let too many people know where you are, and from a practicality standpoint, you said he has siblings and cousins and the whole thing. They should have the knowledge and money to deal with it. And besides… you don't owe him anything."
Misha nodded slowly. "Yeah. I don't owe him anything." He sighed then put on a smile. "Now where to?"
--
Apart from the artificial sun hanging over the city, and the glimmers of light from the dark waters beneath the floating platforms that comprised the city's ground, it was easy to forget that this place was anywhere special. Except for the doorways. The doorways were all very large.
"Why build the city on top of a lake?" asked Misha as he stared down through the grating.
"Lake? Ah, I guess you can call it that," said Bran.
"It's not a lake?"
"It's an inland sea. And to answer your question, the city is built on top of water because not all creatures big and small can walk on land so the water's there to provide equal opportunities."
"You mean…" Misha's mind quickly clicked it's way through that logic. "There's a city under the water too?"
Bran smiled. "I knew you were smart. "He reached over and loosely tugged up Misha's tail then removed the charm from it. "You don't need to wear this down here."
"Oh," said Misha, swishing his tail back and forth. "That actually feels a lot better." The energy drain of the charm wasn't noticable when it was on, but he could feel the difference once it was off.
"Good. This way then."
Misha followed Bran up a ramp and into the buildings of the South Sea Department.
"Why are the doorways so big?" he asked.
"Equal opportunities."