Even if they knew about it more exactly, this is a sort of problem that is hard to address directly. Except by not blowing up, and keeping anything else from it, and waiting.

Life outside the window continues about as before.

Even if she wasn't incredibly good at handling boredom, this is new. She'll watch as long as she's allowed.

(Yes, it's approaching dinnertime. Yes, she's hungry. No, she's not going to do anything about that. They'll feed her or they won't, and thinking about it is not to her benefit.)

And before too much longer she will see a man walking down the street toward the building she is in, holding a young boy's hand while a girl skips ahead. Depending on angle, she may or may not see them go inside. Soon after that may or may not hear the door, and then talking in the entrance hallway.

She comes out to hug Laeres and the kids, explain what is better done so in person, warn Zasi and Leran not to go into the living room for now. 

Then she goes back to the living room.

"Hey, my husband just came home; we asked him to pick up some food that might be better for you than what we just already had. We have some new food bars or drinks, or we can make something more meal-like for you.

Do you know what you might want better?"

She doesn't quite manage to hide the alarm that this question evokes, but she makes a good attempt, and shrugs.

"I'm sorry, I didn't mean to scare you.

Nod if you want a bar, and I'll bring you some, and if not we can get a meal together for you?"

She looks for a moment like she's going to curl up and stop responding again, but instead just turns away.

"OK. I'm going to get your tablet to show you some meal options. If you find one you like, you can touch it on the screen, and we'll get you that one. Otherwise we'll just get a selection and you can pick from that.

Whatever you pick is alright, we're just as glad to get you whatever it is you might like."

"I'm sorry. Is there something about that that will hurt you, or that won't work?"

And now she does curl up.

"I'm sorry.

You don't have to believe me, but it's ok, whatever problem there is we won't be upset at you and we'll do our best to help and whatever you need is ok..."

Uh-huh. She doesn't uncurl.

"Ok.

If you'd like me to stay with you, nod or do something like that? And if not I can leave you alone again."

"Mrh." Noncommittal and grumpy; 'do whatever you want', perhaps.

That is not something like nodding, and this is the best she can do with what she has right now.

"Ok. The tablet will show you the meal ideas - you don't have to look at them. You can call us any time."

And she leaves.

She waits, again; uncurls; looks, carefully avoiding touching it, at the tablet.

It is inviting her to look at some meal varieties!

She is not in fact going to touch it, no matter what it's inviting her to do.

After a little bit it'll start paging through them itself. 

She flinches, a little, when it starts, but keeps watching - she's not expecting to learn much from what's on offer and what they end up giving her, but she might learn something, and it might be important.

In what she may or may not find odd, basically all the food items are not going to look familiar to her.

There's familiar types of things - what look like fruits and vegetables, what look like cooked grains. And there's things one probably can't notice it with at this level of detail - bread and soup and and dumplings and such look pretty much like bread and soup dumplings and don't obviously display their ingredients. But the fruits, vegetables, grains, and so on are not going to be anything she's seen before.

That's weird. And alarming. Very alarming, in fact. She'd assumed - it had really seemed to be the case - that books and television were a reliable and relatively uncensored window to the outside world. But if they weren't - if they'd managed to keep something this basic from her, if they'd bothered to keep something this basic from her - then there's very little of what she knows that she can actually trust.

She curls up again. To think about it, supposedly.

Heria, meanwhile, is consulting with Shen again. 

If she was guessing from Denice's responses she might have guessed something like 'punished for eating', but that didn't seem to be in the documentation?