Uhm. Let's start with why he's here.

In the kitchen metaphor it's probably going to be... there, on the counter. There is a bowl of some silvery liquid that has his pod floating in it. He points to it, and to the charred piece of metal that's sitting on the stove and smells of burning space stations and failed experiments (how can that be a smell?).

The Tender carefully puts a finger in the silvery liquid and Mark experiences a flashback in fast forward of the descent. From the panic in orbit, to the impact of the surface, to the long stretch of boredom to the interactions with various otherworldly creatures. The flashback ends and Mark can see that the Tender's eyes in real life are closed.

The mental representation then puts their hand on the space station fragment and Mark experiences those hectic last moments on the station again, but again quickly, and with some distance to the experience.

The Tender expresses understanding and sorrow and empathy and reassurance.

The Tender touches a specific part of the fragment again and Mark experiences a part of the memory again.

"Okay we gotta GO! To the escape pods, NOW!"

Then picks another and Mark can hear a memory of his own voice.

"Roquefort is the pinnacle of human food, you heathen."

Finally they walk over to the pod in the bowl and Mark can hear the initial bits of his improvised lyrics:

"There's a starman falling from the sky

He'd like to reach the ground safe

But he fear he'll blow up fine"

The Tender expresses confusion and interest and inquiry, and again gestures to the surroundings.

(Throughout, their eyes very carefully seek to only the bowl, the charred remains, and Mark's representation of himself, ignoring the clutter of other symbolic items, images plastered on surfaces and other more abstract representations.)

Bowie or food first?

They say music is universal, right? He remembers something about whales singing.

Roquefort is definitely not universal. Yet!

He looks around... there, door. He beckons Spooky Eyes to follow him. He moves into a relatively empty corridor, then into a metaphorical room.

And the memory of Bowie should be... there, he can see the record player. He grabs a vinyl and starts the player. The music fills the small cabin.

The Tender listens to the abstract amalgamated representative of every time Mark has heard that song, merged with his emotions and experiences of it, sprinkled with some of the associations of other Bowie music. They can not do much else but enjoy it to a significant fraction of how much Mark enjoys re-audiating it.

The real life face is shaped into a fairly close facsimile of a smile of enjoyment, and the mind representation is swaying along in a very human fashion.

Then the song ends and they are awoken from their reverie. They communicate appreciation, but also misunderstanding.

Uh. Misunderstanding. Maybe they would have wanted to know about Roquefort instead.

Ok, that's totally not how the real TK is... was structured but he can probably open a door from the corridor directly to the command center.

Come, Spooky Eyes, if you want to understand more about the station we can do that better over there.

The command center is an unassuming place. The station mostly ran itself, so there was rarely a need to be there, but he knows that it is where the manual overrides where, so based on the whole mental metaphor the plans should be easier to view here. Plus it has big screens, so there's that.

He tosses up a 3d model of TK.

"This is where I lived for the past... I don't even know how many years now. I was running at first, mostly from my past but... I found something here. Research, pushing the boundaries of what humans know about the deep structure of the cosmos. Curiosity, bold experiments far away from any inhabited places.

"Then... something went wrong. Some days ago now, I've lost count of how many to be honest, I could check it but that would require leaving the mindspace. A routing experiment and... it was probably my fault."

"Damn."

"I hope I was the only one to sink and the others will all get rescued."

"Would serve me well."

As Mark gets a hang of manipulating his own mindspace, the environment quickly stops being cluttered with random deeply private things, and instead symbolic representations appear when he wants to refer to them. The Tender picks up on the intention to _show_ the command center and unlocks their eyes from his face and starts to curiously look around the room, pausing to inspect the 3D model from several angles. Mark is still new to this, but the Tender is not, so when the big screens flicker with faces of people who may or may not be lost, reflections of guilt, and unrelated thoughts, they don't look. They express curiosity, but again misunderstanding.

When he starts speaking they intently stare again, every now and then reproducing some repeated sounds. "Ai". "Ww". "Me".

They look confused and focused, then shake their head and hold up their hand, palm up.

Floating above it appears a glass sphere slightly larger than Mark's hand, which contains a number of small, odd... fungi? floating around, with ethereal connections between them.

The Tender mimes touching the sphere, points to Mark, and extends the item toward him. 

spherebop

His senses are overwhelmed by a fast forward journey through a series of mental images and sensations. Unlike when he was reliving his own memories, the unfamiliarity of this new material makes the experience way more intense. 

The information comes in flashes, and each flash lets through a background noise of something otherwordly, like a hum of the beyond. It decorates the edges of the flashes as if removed almost completely, but not quite enough, by an imperfect noise gate. Every touch of this signal is so dense and alien that it grinds slightly upon his mind, but seems to not have any other lasting effect than leaving another headache.

He gets flashes of observation of small misshapen mushrooms with patterns of different muted colors. They seem to slowly swim through water through contracting various skirt-like edges, and dispense spores that disperse in the water.

The majority of the package of information focuses in on these spores. He sees different variants of spores, dispersed in various different ways, absorbed through different methods, and each flash comes attached with meaning. This particular pattern means nutrients to be found here. This other kind of spore that travels particularly quickly means danger, and this variant means that the message is modified slightly to mean escape upward, escape downward, or escape laterally. This kind of spore means a call in distress. This way of using spores does not have a survival-attached meaning, and instead is used recreationally. A... joke? 

When the onslaught ends, Mark finds himself confident that he could decode the nuanced meaning of any of these messages, as well as produce any message the limited protocol allows, if only he had the organs to do either.

After ten seconds or so, he can again experience the familiar mind realm, though he finds himself in a featureless generic room of Thyrillian Kappa instead of the command center.

The Tender waits until he comes back to the present, then lets down their hand, letting the sphere disappear, and gently lifts Mark's hand to a similar position. They communicate reciprocation. 

So it was the Roquefort that they were looking for.

He tries... remembering his English lessons, from elementary school throughout university and... making them into a ball?

It's a blue ball, with two red-on-white crosses intersecting each other.

This ball is significantly bigger than the one the Tender presented. They touch it with some measure of relief and close their eyes. 

How is Mark's collected intuitive and formal understanding of the English language organized? Are there insights you could make about his personality from the organization? Does he include any especially salient memories that are fundamental to his understanding of English, or is it anonymized and dry as if distilled into a dictionary and grammar definition?

It's very... organized.

One: I, he, we, me, people, two, be, have, ...

Then simple words, the most used. Build a shared sound book. Keep it easy. Repeat a lot. Short expressions. Slowly make big.

And as vocabulary and grammar get more complex branch into some technical words, a smattering of geography, a quantum of physics...

As Mark's entire understanding of English flashes before his and the Tender's eyes, the Tender seems to not get overwhelmed the way Mark got, and instead calmly is looking down at the empty floor looking thoughtful during the experience. Partway through they start to make sounds and trying sentences that become more and more complex as the time goes on. 

"Water is wet."

"The currents of the depths are few but strong."

"The implications of the existence of the ancients are profound and best left uninvestigated, lest you invite the natural consequences."

Then they think for a moment, then look back at Mark.

"Thank you for gifting me this understanding of your language. Giving you a language of mine would likely harm you, which is why I looked for the most simple language I could find to show what I wanted you to do."

Then, since establishing identity early is important, "I don't have a name the way your language implies you have, but you may call me by my task. I am the Tender to the Depths, or just the Tender. Pleased to meet you."

"Mark Thornwell, a pleasure likewise."

He doesn't extend his hand, he knows some aquatic creatures can be hurt by human touch. No clue if Tender is one of them but better safe than sorry.

"So, you seem to be interested in fungi. Do you have a moment to hear about our Lord and Saviour Roquefort?"

The Tender takes this in stride without any sign of amusement. They learn that a natural topic of conversation is food that is related to the conversation partner's apparent interests.

"I certainly do, tell me about this food. Or show me if you prefer." They gesture, without looking, to the random thoughts that appear in the periphery when he's not focusing on shaping it.

"Though I will say that you likely should rest your mind from having visitors soon. Perhaps we should continue this conversation in your capsule outside of the mindspace. Thank you for the immense showing of trust by the way, our communication could not have been established this quickly otherwise."

He goes towards the minifridge in the corner of the room.

"How would we continue the conversation in my capsule? I've seen you outside of it, I think the pressure differential would be too much even if you could somehow enter it without opening the hatch and drowning me."

"Well, it was either trying to communicate or just accepting my inevitable demise. I'm not particularly fond of accepting my inevitable demise, so... communication it is!"

Impression, (Impression) bleu (blue cheese).

The impression of blue cheese comes attached with not only the doubtlessly positive thoughts of it from Mark's perspective, but the taste memories themselves are also as experienced through Mark's taste buds, so the Tender's experience of the foodstuff becomes about as joyous as Mark's, though perhaps somewhat muted in amplitude.

They allow themselves to be taken by the reveries of sinking teeth into delicate soft cheeses for a moment.

"My gifts allow me to adjust to many different environments, and likewise travel in ways best not described in detail. Your language uses 'atmospheres' as a unit, which leads me to believe the pressure of your capsule will be close to one of the unit. If so I will adapt after a few moments. The greater question is whether you'd like to invite me into your lair or not. Either is fine."

"Sure, why not." His understanding of physics is already being heavily revised today, it's not as if additional strangeness is going to break him.

Plus it will keep his mind from checking how long he has until the oxygen runs out.

"All right. Could you please close your eyes and try not to pay attention to how the the air travels in the room for the next moments, for your safety?"

"For my safety?"

"For your safety."

Sure, whatever.

"I'll close my eyes. Should I... close the mental communication first?"

He doubts he'll be much able to ignore air movements, but at least he can... avoid being startled and paying more attention than normal.

"Certainly, but I can leave on my own. One moment."

And then they exit, which is contextualized as them walking through a door in the current environment. After they're gone, the awareness of the environmental metaphor for his mind starts to lose sharpness and slowly fade. He can hang on to it for a while if he tries, but he'll be unable to make it stay.

His normal vision comes back into view. Or perhaps it was always there and he just started paying attention to it again.

Outside the porthole, the Tender is waiting with a considerably more human-seeming body language than before, occasionally looking away from eye contact, and tilting their body less head on.