"It's a start!"

Arillegua spends the rest of the car ride on her device, and eventually they're out of the worst of the traffic and it's a pretty quick shot the rest of the way to a swanky hotel.  There's a pair of security guards waiting in the suite, along with a hot platter of something Bella can't recognize and a sizeable display tree loaded with foods which are more identifiably breads and cheeses and pastries.

Bella will taste the unrecognizable thing first and have a hunk of bread ready to go if it's awful and she needs to eat something that isn't the unrecognizable thing.

The main body of the unrecognizable thing has the properties:

• savory
• densely spongey
• lightly salted
• saucy
• complex enough to have separate initial, main, and aftertastes

It additionally has, on top:

• a few layers of wilted greens, arranged geometrically
• a sprinkle of finely-chopped herbs

Arillegua plates up a serving and goes at it pretty enthusiastically.

She's not big into the spongeyness situation but she'll have some more of it alongside her bread and cheese and pastries.

The bread and the cheese and the pastries at least contain some pretty delicious options within them, though others are lackluster and two of the cheeses are actively gross.

Oh, no, active grossness. She'd better take smaller pilot tastes of things.

"Oh, great," Arillegua exclaims, leaning over to show Bella her phone while sending several heart emoji to someone.  "My - help person - made something for you to say what you like and don't with."  She follows a link to three pictures of the serving tree, offset by angles so as to cover the whole thing.  There are little boxes covering the images, one per item.  "You tap them to cycle through."  She demonstratively pinch-zooms to one of the offending cheeses and, moving her finger out of the way between touches so Bella can see, changes its box from blank to smiley to neutral to angry.  "And then later you and my staff can have a better idea of what food to get you."

"Oh, thank y- thank your help person!" Taps and zooms.

"Heeee's great."  She finishes her plate and disappears for a few minutes.

When she comes back she's wearing substantially less makeup and hair.  "Can I see my TL again for a minute?"

Sure, Bella hands it back.

"Thanks."  She grabs a pastry.  "My help person also wants to know whether you need any sounds to sleep and if you know what you like in a tutor."

"I like... not-sounds... to sleep. Uh, being... fast like tidy and not fast like messy, I don't know the words... more reading than talking...?"

"Do you need silence - perfect not sounds - or just quiet - not many sounds."

"Quiet is okay."

"Oh, good."  Type type.  "Does it sound okay if we try to find someone basically like that who can show up tomorrow, and then if you don't like them we can find someone else, or do you want to wait to learn until you're sure it's someone you like."

"First thing sounds okay."

"Fabulous."  She spends another couple minutes on the TL and then passes it back to Bella with the pictures and boxes back on the screen.

Poke poke poke. "I will - not sing, mmmmmmmm - some things?" she says. "Without words."

"Yes!  One moment - Lucero, can you get a recording going - " she drags a weird keyboard over from a corner of the room as one of her staffpeople deboxes a microphone " - Bella, do you mind if we all hear this or do you want Hilaria and Lucero to leave since they're not helping with producing."

"It's fine." She starts humming random classical-and-such music, starting with Ode to Joy, which does have words but is beyond her ability to reproduce in that form.

Arillegua attempts to figure out some backing chords at a volume that's hopefully not obtrusive enough to throw Bella off.  But from what she can hear, it seems like they're using at least approximately the same sort of music theory here as back home.  (Though Arillegua does get a bit jazzier with it than this piece in particular calls for.)

She makes a bit of a face when there's a particularly jarring bit of harmonization but goes on humming.

Arillegua sticks to something a little more conventional the next time around. It's still not entirely right, there's something off about that bit in the middle.