Whatever the young wizard on the other side of the bar perceived of her comment, Deryn wasn't sure, but thankfully he was neither miffed nor annoyed by it. She nodded as he responded to it, passing his ordered drink to him at the same time. Now standing in front of him, she couldn't possibly look at him as intently as before when he was at the table across the room, so Deryn had managed to only catch a glimpse of the sudden thoughtful look on his face.

She didn't have time to dwell on it for much longer, however, when his question probably revealed what was going through his mind. To be honest, Deryn had been asked this few times already since starting working here, usually by more sober patrons. "You can go ahead and call it a dingy hellhole, for all I care," She replied with a chuckle. "That's how I refer to it, anyway," Deryn grinned offhandedly. "And this is only a temporary job and a part-time job at that. They don't pay that bad as one might think," She responded.

Perhaps it was a fault of Deryn's to reveal even the smallest about her personal life to strangers, but meeting a sober person obviously without any under-table kind of business on their mind and with ability to form coherent sentences was a pleasant ocurrence in this job, and why shouldn't she keep a proper conversation going? "And what are a decent man like you doing here?" She inquired curiously. "You don't really fall into the category of the rest of clientele here."