Marie nodded at the dryad's choice. "Good choice." She took a small plate and an ice cream dish down from the shelf and stacked them together. Then she turned to the freezer and slid the top open. She scooped out a single scoop, though it was a rather large on, into the dish. She shut the freezer, and walked over to the counter that held all the condiments.
She pumped the homemade caramel onto the ice cream, effectively coating it and allowing quite a bit to overflow onto the plate below. Then she sprinkled some toasted almonds on top and followed it up with a cherry. Caramel in any capacity was basically just cooked brown sugar, vanilla and butter. How sticky and dense it was depended upon how long it was cooked. Matilda's caramel was probably more butter than usual, so it had a little bit of a saltier flavor than most. The saltiness would never outweigh the sweetness, though. It simply complimented it.
She set the dish in front of Jia and wiped a drop of caramel off the counter with her cloth. "There you go. The caramel is sort of famous around here unless you don't know about it. Like a buried treasure." She smiled and leaned her hip against the counter. "You'll have to let me know what you think so I can pass the word along. Matilda's takes their customer's comments very seriously." Marie was deadpan, but there was a hint of a sparkle in her eyes as she spoke. She was somewhat kidding with Jia, really only interested for herself if the girl would like the caramel.
Marie pursed her lips and thought about the question. "I'm going on my third year. I started shortly after beginning at Alden. I only work a couple of days during the week while school is in session, and almost every day during the summer." Marie was a shy person by nature. She worried about someone finding her skin and making her a prisoner for the rest of her life. She had it hidden in a relatively safe place, but one could never be sure what might happen. In general, she avoided talking to humans because of this, and it had made her shy. At Matilda's though, it was a different story. It was her job to be sociable and pleasant and sometimes that meant engaging in conversation she might not otherwise have done. She'd met more people at Matilda's than her whole two previous years on campus.
"Are you a student at Alden?" Jia seemed like the right age to Marie and she had asked the first question so the selkie felt comfortable returning her own query.