She keeps not knowing words and it's very sad!! It's even sadder because the solution to her ignorance is right there but she can't use it!! What is 'aidii'. But apparently they can make one for her if she doesn't have one. So presumably it's another thing that the food bank does for free, because it's a charitable organization. She can probably say she doesn't have one safely, then.

Thank the stars, he's speaking more slowly. This place, at least, is not one of those places that will brush you off if you don't speak the language well.

"I don't, sorry." She again looks very sad.

"Okay." Write write write. "Come stand over here so I can take your picture," he says, picking up a hand-sized silver boxy thing and leading her to a bit of empty wall.

Picture? It again takes her several seconds to jog her memory of what that means...ah. It's probably some sort of cyanotype, or a more technologically advanced version, that will make a portrait of her very quickly.

She has to remind herself that she is not the one being hunted by an institution, and that she is a total stranger to everyone here.

She'll brush her hair a little with her hands and be led to the wall. She will have a neutral expression.

He points the silver thing at her and it makes noises for a second. "Okay, all done. You can wait outside, we'll call you when we're ready for you."

"Thank you," she says again, and will go outside. She's honestly rather nervous, but she hides it well. She thinks.

She'll wait outside, then. Does anything happen?

Only three of the people who were originally waiting are still there, and the one with the book has collected her box and is munching on an apple from it while she works. The other two give her a curious look, but don't interrupt their conversation to greet her; after a few minutes a middle-aged woman comes out of the food bank with her box and one of the two is called in. Around this time, another group of half a dozen people show up, all carrying padded bags like the man from earlier; one of them goes up to the door to get the young man, who comes out to take a census.

It continues on about like this - someone comes out of the food bank with a box and someone else is called in to replace them every five or ten minutes - five more times before she's called.

"Okay. This is your ID," the young man says, offering her a slim plastic rectangle with her name and photo on one side and the logo from the sign out front on the other. "You need to bring it every time you come, or we can't give you anything. This is your cold bag," a padded one like the people outside have, "and you need to bring it if you want cold food. If you lose it it's five dollars for a replacement or you can bring your own if you have one. You can come by Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday in the afternoon for pickup - we're open from one to five. This packet explains all our policies, and this one is information about resources for the homeless, you can call them for help with finding a place to live. Do you understand?"

She will wait patiently! There are no scary people that have arrived to come and take her away, nor is anything bad happening to the people who go inside.

She will accept the slim plastic rectangle in both hands. She still doesn't have an intuitive sense for plastic – one part of her expected it to be heavy and cold like iron or bronze, while the other part of her expected it to be light and bendable like paper. She will also accept the padded bag. 

"Sorry. I understand some. Can I paper..." she mimes her right hand scribbling something. "Can I write down?"

"Sure." He has blank paper and pens and a clipboard she can use.

"Thank you," she says again, accepting the paper and pens and clipboard.

She'll write down stuff in Towan. If the man is looking at her write – it will look nothing like Roman letters. It looks like a cross between Devanagari and Hebrew script. While she writes, she tries to repeat what the man said to her as she understood it.

"My ID," she says, picking up the rectangle. "I bring when I go here, or I get nothing. My cold bag," she says, picking up the bag, "I bring if I want cold food. What is 'replacement'?"

"If you lose it - if you don't have it anymore and can't bring it - you tell us and we give you a new one for five dollars. Or you can buy one somewhere else, but that's usually more expensive, it costs more money."

She is a very good student and will studiously write notes.

"Ah, five dollars for new one. Or can get one from other place. And...I can get food here Sunday, Tuesday, Thursday. One to five." She has no idea what 'one to five' means here but she'll ask Denice about that later. It seems to be related to the time.

She then holds up the packet. "This explains...sorry, I do not know 'policies'. But the other one can read about help finding house."

"That's right. Policies are how we do things, like we have a spice pantry that you can get something from once a month, or you can talk to the workers to change what days you can come, it tells you that. Or you can ask, if you have questions - Maria who's here on Tuesdays and Wednesdays speaks Spanish, if that's easier for you."

"Oh, like rule." Wow! They'll actually give her spices! Only once a month, which is...she forgot how much time a month is. But still! 

She continues writing. "I can ask change when I come. I can ask Maria on Tuesdays and Wednesdays. Maria speaks Spanish." She wants to say that she doesn't actually know Spanish, but that might prompt questions of what language she actually speaks. And if she was transported into a wholly new world, well, no one here will speak any languages she speaks. So she might as well not broach the topic.

Marina has brown skin, though her facial features suggest she's Middle Eastern or North African than Hispanic.

"I write down everything now," she says, finally.

"Okay." He takes his clipboard and pen back. "Bill over there is in charge of the boxes today, he'll help you get your food together."

Bill - the man in the flannel shirt - has a box prepared for her, with bread and tortillas and peanut butter and applesauce and peanuts and cheese crackers and chocolate chips and canned corn and peas and black beans and hand soap and shampoo and two sticks of deodorant, and a plastic bag with lunch meat and string cheese and sliced cheese and a quart of milk and a bag of ice. "Does all this look good to you? Anything here you can't eat, any special requests?"

Marina will once again thank the man and then go to Bill.

Wow! She cannot read English and so cannot figure out what the yellow-orange jelly or brown paste is, though from the pictures on the label they have to do with apples and peanuts. This is so much food! It will last the two of them days! 

She's a little concerned about the cheese and milk. Back in her apartment in Kosofo, she had a keepbox – a Tranquil artifact that would preserve food that was kept in it. Though it was really expensive, it was cheaper than trying to use iceboxes – Kosofo is in the subtropics where winter is cold, but not cold enough that the lakes and rivers freeze over and their ice can be harvested. Any ice they use has to be imported from the south, where it's colder. There is no such appliance in the empty house they're living in. Although...they are providing ice too. They can probably eat all the perishables today and then the nonperishables they can eat later.

She's also concerned about the corn, peas, and beans. She recognizes the vegetables from the pictures on the cover, and she knows that they require cooking.

She points to the cans. "This need cook. I cannot...use cook. No place cook."

"These are pre-cooked, they're safe to eat cold - I don't think we have any fresh vegetables that don't need to be cooked, I guess I can give you some fruit instead if you want."

She takes a moment to process that, and then realizes what he's trying to say. "Oh! Already cook! No need. This good." She looks genuinely delighted. While she would be interested in the fruit, the corn, beans, and peas will fill them up more. Which is the main concern right now.

"Thank you, thank you!" she says, beaming with happiness. She might have leaked some of that happiness through – involuntary inducement of emotions is an effect of being awakened to Flowers – but she remembers to clamp down on that. She will merely look Very Happy and Relieved.

"Sounds good, then. Did you want something from the spice pantry today?"

She does, but she kind of like, can't really use spices to their full extent when she can't cook. It would be a waste. And if she can only have access to the spice pantry once a month, then she'd rather save that for when she can use it. If she'll even be here in a month's time, which seems...unlikely. Though if that's the case, then she might as well take some now, because she won't be able to get them in the future.

She briefly considers the prospect of using spices as trade goods, before realizing that if this world is rich enough to be able to provide well, people who are essentially beggars with spices, then the value of spices must not be that high. 

"Yes, please," she ends up saying.

"Okay, that's just down here." A cardboard tray past the rows of boxes holds shakers of a variety of basic spices, two-packs of salt and pepper shakers sealed together in plastic, bundles of three packets of taco seasoning, and a handful of spice blends in shakers with colorful lids.

She recognizes salt, though she's unsure why it's bundled with pepper. She has no idea what taco seasoning is, and the spice blends in shakers she's not sure about. She doesn't seem to be able to get the smell of the spices inside from the taco seasoning packets, so she doesn't take those. For the shakers – she'll try to find one that has cinnamon in it. She really likes cinnamon, even though it's so expensive. She still kind of can't believe they're just giving it away like that.

She'll take the cinnamon shaker, if available, plus one two-pack of salt and pepper shakers.

They do have cinnamon! It's a good sized container, too, it'll plausibly last her a month or two if she's at all frugal with it. "You're only supposed to get one," Bill comments when she reaches for the salt and pepper, "but it's fine this time, we have plenty of those."

Ah! Well, she supposes that spices here are cheaper, not cheap. Well, in that case she'd rather the spices go to people who'd be better placed to use them.

"I'm sorry. Other people need spices also, I understand. I take this one," she says, putting down the cinnamon and taking the salt and pepper shaker instead. How big are the salt and pepper shakers? She might try drying and salting the meat to make it last longer if there's enough salt.

They're reasonably sized for personal use as seasoning; probably not enough to salt meat with.

That's too bad. Regardless, she'll take the salt and pepper shaker and put it in the box. She'll thank Bill and be on her way, unless there's anything else that she has to do.