The person seems not only underdressed for the occasion but also bewildered and alarmed! You could mistake the way she immediately falls over for a dramatic dance move if you were very generous.

The crowd is apparently feeling pretty generous!

(The singing that's happening is in... Spanish?  The performers all have (conspicuous, bedazzled) earpieces and the speakers aren't optimizing for sound quality as heard from the stage itself; it's nearly impossible to make out any words despite the volume.)

Once she's done belting out the last few lines of the chorus, the lead singer walks boppily over to apearee and offers her a hand up with theatrical enthusiasm.

"...gracias?" murmurs Bella, standing up.

The verbal component of that gets absolutely no response!  But the singer telegraphs very clearly that Bella should allow herself to be led across the stage and then continue off it, where there are quite a lot of people in T-shirts and lanyards observing the action.  She gets blown an exaggerated kiss before the singer turns back to center stage to soak up her applause.

The T-shirted lanyarded people are quick to usher her further into the wings and sit her down on a folding chair.  The lanyard closest to her apparently belongs to one Mercedes Garza, working at the Gira de las Mariposas de Arillegua Ortega 2033 as SEGURIDAD.

That's so valid of everybody involved. She will sit on the folding chair and catch her breath.

The audience calls for an encore and Arillegua obliges with only a little play-acted reticence.  A different security person hands Bella a bottle of water.  The staff are talking to each other but it's still loud enough that she can't make much out; they seem to be relying on a network of (rhinestoneless) headsets to understand each other.

It's hard to go far wrong with drinking a bottle of water. She will go ahead and do that though thirst is not actually primary among her issues with the situation right now.

When she's gotten a ways through it, someone hands Mercedes a headset, who fiddles with both that unit and her own before placing the spare over Bella's ears.  The sound cancelling is pretty impressive; she can barely hear the performance with them on.

"Are you alright?" Mercedes asks her, in Spanish.

"I am very -" What is Spanish for 'confused'. It's going to be something obviously cognate but she doesn't know what specific cognate it is. "I do not know what is around me or why I am here."

"Heard."  She nods sympathetically.  "Did you take any drugs tonight?"

"No, but I would not believe me to say this."

"Did you hurt your head?"

"My head does not hurt. Maybe though."

"What's your name?"

"Bella. - Isabella Marie Swan. American."

Mercedes slides a strange electronic device with a weird screen and a weirder keyboard out of a pocket on the side of her thigh.  She holds it with her left hand and presses buttons with her right (the object being shaped such that this seems about the only practical way one could interact with it).  'Isabella Marie Suan American, "Bella"' appears on the screen.

"Okay, Bella, and what's the date today?"

That's a wacky doodad, is it like a specialized Blackberry or something - "Uh, it was Tuesday, January 25, 2005. But I'm very not know what is around me."

She can see a bit of a stylized butterfly logo peeking out between Mercedes's fingers though not whether it incorporates the Blackberry one further down.  "...Do you normally take any medications?"

"No."

"Did you come here with anyone, that you know of?"

"No."

"What do you remember from before we started talking?"

"I started being in the -" she doesn't know stage "music floor. Before that, I was in a cold place of cars. A car on the - cold water - ice! a car on the ice - came toward me."

"...Okay."  Mercedes starts navigating to something on her gadget, which apparently also has a little ThinkPad-esque nubbin on it.  "Bella, I know basic medicine and I'd like to check if you're okay in some ways that involve touching you.  Would that be okay?"

"Yes." Sigh.

The doodad walks Mercedes through a number of tests.  She puts her watch on Bella, has it take her pulse, and enters the number into the device.  She takes her watch back, lights it up slightly blindingly, and checks Bella's eyes.  She presses on Bella's scalp in several places, with instructions to let her know if any of them hurt.  She re-asks several questions to see whether the answers stay consistent, and adds one about whether Bella has an emergency contact she'd like them to try and get ahold of.

She'll rattle off Charlie's number, sure. "In America."

Mercedes does not appear to know what to make of that.  "...What's his [something unintelligible something unintelligible]?  Do you remember?"

"I don't know those words. Spanish is my second language."

"His name on [something unintelligible].  A name and five numbers?"

"I don't know [unintelligible]. His name is Charles Swan. I do not think he has five numbers."

"...Okay.  We can look for him by name.  Can you spell that for me?"  She hands over the doodad, the keyboard of which is even stranger up close although it does contain approximately all the letters she needs.  Except w.

Is that Dvorak? "I cannot find the doble uve."

It is not, and in fact instead of being any horizontal layout, it's arranged radially, forming a partial arc.  Mercedes navigates to the special characters menu and to the regularish-letters-shaped submenu for her, which she can laboriously navigate through with the arrow keys.

While she's going through that, though, the star finishes her verydefinitelyactuallyfinal bows and struts offstage.  Mercedes pops one ear of her headset out of alignment so she can hear what the singer and some of the other staff have to say, but she doesn't move her mic very far away from her mouth.  Bella hears:

"I don't think she's probable to hurt anyone, and she seems mostly fine - " followed by a summary of what Bella's told her.
"No, we can do that next."
"Maybe???  I don't know what else..."
"Of course, Ms. Ortega."

And there does not actually seem to be a w character here, at least that she can find.

"I still cannot find the doble uve and cannot spell my last name without it."

"I'm sorry, I haven't heard of that.  Ms. Ortega had the idea that she might take some pictures with you and post them, and then because she's very famous many people will see them and someone you know might recognize you.  It seems your arrival might have been miraculous, though, so maybe no such person exists here.  I'm very sorry if so."

"I can have pictures."

Then several staff members will take back the headset and ask if they can arrange her hair a little and go for a ""candid"" shot with Arillegua handing her another bottle of water - the cameras are also weird; they're like if someone made a flip phone very flat and blocky, with the whole outer side revealing itself to be a screen she can see herself moving in (though this one is at least in color) - and a posed one with them together against a wall.  They don't ask her to smile for either; Arillegua looks photogenically concerned in both.

She can say "gracias" again and try to be angled appropriately for the camera but she is kind of concerned that if they don't know what an American or the letter W are she's not getting home this way.

After that Mercedes would like Bella to breathe real hard into this thing which isn't that different from any breathalyzers she might have tried in driver's ed, although it does have one of those weird grayscale screens on it.

This is so reasonable of them and her irritation is not rational And Yet. Huff.

The readout has lines for several drugs other than alcohol, though none that she recognizes.  All clear.

No one but Mercedes is optimizing for speaking slowly or clearly enough for Bella to really be able to follow, though she catches some things that're probably about where she'll be staying and about whether she really did appear out of nowhere.  This event was Very Filmed, so everyone's pretty on board with that being what happened.  One of the securitypeople is audibly praying and looking very moved.

"Where is this?" she asks Mercedes during a lull in the activity.

"The Domingo Moreno Theater, in the city of Las Devotas, in the country of Céle.  ...On the planet and plane of Génesis."

"Ah. That is not where I am from."

Mercedes nods rapidly and sympathetically.  "I'm sorry."

"A car was going to attack me." That's not the right word but it's probably close enough.

"I'm sorry," she repeats, and a bit awkwardly holds her arms in offer of a hug.

"No thank you."

Mercedes seems perhaps relieved by this and puts her arms back down.  "Do you have any immediate physical needs?"

"- no, I don't think so."

"Is there anything you want, that I might be able to get you?"

"I don't know how long it will take someone who has the job of people who do not know where they are to take the job away from you."

"I can tell the person who takes the job away from me, if there's something that will take longer than that."  She holds up the doodad.  "There's a document about you that everyone who needs to will be able to see."

"Uh, well, in two or three hours I will want food. Some hours after that I will want sleeping." Sigh.

She takes this down.  "Do you eat all kinds of food?"

...handwobble gesture. "I eat all kinds of food but do not like all kinds of food."

"What do you like the best, and what do you dislike?"

"I like, uh, bread and cheese and fish and things of sugar, I do not like spicy or - I don't have all the words. I like most things on Earth. I do not know what people of Génesis eat."

For some reason this causes Mercedes to look concerningly horrified!  After several seconds she swallows it into a more professional expression.  "...I'm sorry that you had to eat fish.  The people of Génesis do not eat animals."  She grabs her own wrist and applies pressure with her fingertips, with the tenor of a nervous habit.  "It's demonic.  - Or just unsafe."

"- on Earth it is safe and many people do it."

"Génesis doesn't know - at large scale - how to see if an already-dead animal is safe to eat.  And definitely doesn't kill animals to eat."

"...it is good that I know that now."

Mercedes nod-nod-nods and doesn't ask which of those Bella's society did.  "Someone can get you bread and cheese and - candy?  Pastries?"  The genders of the nouns she uses don't all match the ones Bella just said.

Maybe she misremembered the genders of a bunch of nouns, that is the kind of thing she'd expect to happen in a situation like this. "Pastries sound good."

Nod nod type type.

Arillegua turns to Bella and speaks with condescending (but comprehensible!) slowness and articulation.  "Hello!  Welcome to Génesis!  I will take care of you until you can take care of yourself."

"- thank you, that is very kind."

"Mmhm!  Soon we can go to my hotel.  You can wait in the lounge until then.  Let the staff," she gestures broadly, "know, if you need anything."

She is going to get so good at speaking Spanish. "Thank you. Where is the bathroom?" Okay, those she already knew.

"Somebody show her - see you soon!~"  And she chassés off.

Mercedes can take her out of the wings and down some stairs and to a bathroom.  It's basically recognizable, if a bit swanky, although it's missing the little trashcans inside the stalls, and none of the doors, sinks, or soap or paper towel dispensers require touching with one's hands to operate.

Well, she is not at this exact moment in need of a little trashcan inside the stall. She comes out a couple minutes later.

And Mercedes can lead her to a nearby set of couches and chairs.  She motions for Bella to sit but remains standing herself.  "...Do you have any magic powers?"  She looks somewhat abashed.  "I've heard that sometimes people who appear by miracle do."

"- no? Or, uh. I don't think so. Possibly Earth people have something that Génesis people do not but if we do I do not know what it is."

"That makes sense."

"It would be nice to have magic powers."

"I suppose so."  Type type.

And it seems she's just going to stand here for the next half hour or so unless Bella requests anything.

"Can I have paper and pencil?"

" - Sure."  Tappity typity.  "Someone will bring it."

And within a few minutes someone's scrounged her theater-branded pencil and pad.

That'll do. Scribble scribble.

"May I ask what you're writing about?"

"No."

".....Okay."

Eventually Arillegua sweeps by to invite Bella to her car.  It uses shapes differently from ones Bella's used to but not very much so from the other ones she can see driving by, and is mostly black on the exterior but completely pink inside.  Mercedes waves them goodbye.

"So my brother had this idea, that if you remember songs from your world, I could record some, and then you'll earn money when people buy the song!  - Did you understand all that?"

"- I think so! I'm not a very good singer but I could sing a few things. I might not remember all the words. And they would almost all be in my first language, English. Does anyone speak English on Génesis?"

"I haven't heard of it..."  She pokes at a device that's more like the camera from earlier than like Mercedes's.  "If you remember enough words, I can hire a lyricist - someone who writes the words of songs - to translate it.  Are any of these your language?"  She holds out the device.

They're probably not, but they have Spanish, so! Peek?

Some of them look like they might be in scripts she sort of recognizes, but nope!  No English in the whole list.  Arillegua gets about a dozen notifications in the time it takes Bella to look.

"No. I don't see English here."

"Well, I'll get you a tutor - a, hm, a teacher just for you."

"Thank you. I learned Spanish in school but I need" what's practice "to speak it more."

"I haven't heard of 'Spanish' either."

"...ah. What do you call this language?"

"Forjañol."

"It's - very like Spanish."

"That's lucky.  Or an act of God or whatever."  'God' is also not the gender Bella's used to.

"- God is a feminine noun in Forjañol?"

"Yes.  You've been getting like half of the genders wrong."

"I guess that is a difference. English does not have word gender so it was hard to learn. I thought I remembered wrong. God I was very sure of though."

"Weird.  I'm not very religious.  Though people are joking now on Charlemos," she wiggles her device, "that God must be a fan of mine."

"How often do people from other places start being here?"

"I have no idea.  - What's your favorite song?"

"I guess I've never really thought about it. Scarborough Fair?"

"How's it go?  - Can I record you, do you mind?"

"- for you to listen to and not for Génesis to listen to."

"For me to listen to, so I can remember it and maybe record one by me for Génesis to listen to.  In a studio."

"Yes, that's fine."

She doesn't know all the verses of Scarborough Fair but she knows enough of them.

Annnnnnd recordingstop.  "What's it about?"

"Uh - doing things people cannot do, to prove love."

"...We'll get you a tutor for tomorrow.  Do you mind if my producers hear this?"  Devicewaggle.  "The people who help make my music."

"How many people?"

"How about you give me a number."

"...five?" hazards Bella.

"Five," she nods.  "Or less, we'll see."

Nod nod.

"...I don't want to make things worse for you.  You were right to warn me that sharing the recording would have.  Keep doing that."

"I'll try. It's hard in Esp- in Forjañol but I will get better."

"Yeah.  ...Does your world have teleloquers?"

"If we do I do not know the word."

"These."  Yet another illustrative device wave.

"I do not recognize this kind but we have things that I think do some of their things."

"One of the things they do is let lots of people talk together, all the time.  Someday you'll be able to easily do that, and if you have bad things to say about me a lot of people will listen.  So I hope that even if something goes wrong between us because Forjañol is hard for you, we can work it out in private instead of like that."

"- I don't want to tell a thousand thousand people that you were bad when you were trying not to be bad. I am not a mean person."

"...I'm sometimes a mean person.  But I'm going to try not to be to you.  Because... Forjañol is hard for you, and so is Génesis.  And if we work together I think we can make a lot of people feel good, and want to buy enough music that Génesis won't be so hard for you."

"It will be nicer to be rich than poor, definitely."

"It is!  - You can have a singing tutor, too, if you want to be able to sing for more than five people.  Probably after the Forjañol one."

"Is that - the most interesting thing about Earth, the songs? The thing I can do to work?"

"It... is to me, because I'm a singer.  I think if you want to leave and walk into a church and ask for a family to take care of you and not be rich on your own, you'll find one.  Or we can try to make you enough money that you can take care of yourself while you - did you say you were in school?  You look young enough to still be going to school - and then you can find whatever work works best for you.  And if that work is singing, I can help with that, but you'll get a larger share of the money if you're singing for people to hear even a little, and I think it'll make more people want to buy your songs, even if it's not - I don't know what words you know..... even if you're only kind of good and not very good."

"I was in school. I can learn to sing, but are there not-singing things from Earth someone could buy?"

"Like what?"

"Do they want to know - science things? English? Things about how we live?"

"Do you know a lot of science things?"

"Not in very - not so I can build things but so I can talk about the ideas."

"I think... if Earth doesn't have teleloquers I can't go, 'Yes, this is definitely a way you can make enough money to support yourself right away'.  Some people might care about English or how you live but a lot of people definitely already care about my music, and saw you appear onstage at an event they were having fun at, and so have a reason to care about you in that way.  It's a lot of free - press, attention.  Popularity."

"Teleloquers seem like teléfonos, but not in the same - uh - the thing of circles and triangles."

"The thing of circles and triangles.  - Shape?"

"Yes. Teléfonos but a different shape."

"What are the coolest - best - science things you know of?"

"I mostly don't know their Spanish names. Can you ask about things it would be cool to do and I can say if we do them?"

"..........I think if you can talk about ideas but not build things, then any ideas I can come up with aren't useful to you.  I don't know, I'd want - better drugs that keep you awake, and cartridges that fit more information, and safer pyrotechnics with finer detail control, and better automatic leveling on sound systems, and a universal translator - And I'll bet you fifty Célares you can't help with any of those right now.  ...Maybe your shapes are better and you could launch a line of TLs, I don't know.  With money from somewhere."

"I can't build things but I could talk to people who know some things, and tell them more things, and they could build them? But I don't know what those ideas were, I thought maybe you would say, going to the moon, or something."

"I think you're going to need to take some time to learn Forjañol and about what Génesis is like no matter what you want to do.  If during that time you want to copy other people's songs to get money for not very much effort, or possibly a lot of money for somewhat more effort, I can help you with that.  Other things I probably can't help you as much with."

"- yeah, it makes sense that you can help me with song things. I don't mind doing song things."

"If you decide you mind doing song things you can, again, walk into any church and probably very nice people will help you get by.  I won't mind.  If it were me I'd rather be rich, by getting a lot of very small nicenesses that also give people a thing they want and a nice feeling, but I want to be very clear that you can do that, and I won't mind or try to stop you."

"I am not a church person."

"Me either!"  Wink.  "I think we can probably get along great without any need for that."

"Thank you."

"Yeah!  I'm going to catch up on some things, maybe try and think of some songs from your world which are especially popular, or if there are any you think would sound good in my style?"

"For a lot I will only remember the part that is sung two or three places in the song and not the rest, but I will try." She starts scribbling down remembered lyrics.

"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.

Hand-wobble gesture.

How about this progression.  Or this one?

That one gets a tentative nod.

Arillegua does a take playing the chords and melody to record internally on the keyboard.  "What's it about?"

"I don't know."

"Huh, really?  Or do you mean you don't know enough Forjañol to say."

"I mean I do not even remember the song's name."

"...Hm.  Do you think people where you're from might not like music as much as we do?"

"...I think I don't like music as much as someone whose job is music!"

"There are a lot of people whose jobs aren't music, who still buy music!  I'd think a normal person would know enough popular songs to start with one they knew a name for, in a - in an event - like yours, and I don't know if I only think that because my job is music, or because our worlds are different, or if you like music less than most people from your world, or if you're just stressed from being in a new world and not doing your best."

"I know the names of other songs. I just wanted to hum that one because it was in my head."

"Okay!  Sorry."

"Also some music doesn't even have real titles and is called the person's name and a number. Like Beethoven's Fifth." She can hum some of that.

This one Arillegua fails to come up with chords for quite as solidly, but she can get a draft (and the melody on its own) recorded in the keyboard for now, if Bella has other songs in mind.  Or perhaps she'd rather just hum a bunch of melodies into a mic to be picked apart later?

She seems to be in a humming melodies place right now, yeah. She's writing to herself in her foreign language and absentmindedly producing tunes.

If she looks autonomous enough Arillegua is going to go take a shower.

No protests here.

Half an hour later she pads back into the suite's main room, hair wrapped in a towel and body wrapped in a monogrammed plush robe.  "It's getting pretty late here.  Are you tired?"

"A little. I should sleep when people here sleep."

"Do you have any favored rest aids?  Ones you like?"

"I... don't know what that means."

"Uh, the things that are in drinks, or sometimes pills or food, that help you calm down or sleep?"

"No, I don't like that."

"Sure.  You look about my size, do you want to borrow pajamas?"

"Yes thank you."

She can have her pick between teal and pale orange, both silky and in the button-up style.

Silky teal it is.

"We can put you in merch tomorrow and then send you shopping while you wait for the tutor.  Unless something about that sounds sucky."

"It will be a little embarrassing to shop in this language probably but I can do it."

"That's the spirit.  You can sleep in there," she waves.  "There was a spare room in the booking.  Conveniently."

"Thank you. Can I clean my -" she has forgotten the word for teeth, she just points.

"- Sure."  Arillegua dips into her room and returns with what looks like a slightly bulky stick of gum to hand to Bella.

"What is it?"

"It's gum.  You chew on it for a while and it cleans your teeth, and then you spit it out in the trash."

"We don't have that." But she is pretty sure she gets the jist so she'll try it.

"Huh."

It's peach flavored!  And tastes fresh enough, although it's hard to tell whether it works as thoroughly as actually brushing her teeth would.

Well, are her teeth smooth afterward? Any evidence of a flossing situation?

Her teeth feel.... weird.  Smooth, but not quite in the way she's used to.  It kind of feels like there's a coating on them, though one that seems more medical in nature than the kind that comes from food debris.  No flossing situation is immediately to be found.

She'll skip flossing for the night, once won't do her any harm and she doesn't know the word. "Thanks."

"Yeah.  Anything else?"

"I don't think so."

"Okay!  Bother Hilaria and Lucero if you need anything during the night."

Bella nods and goes to bed.

The bed and jammies are comfortable enough, and she sleeps about as well as can be expected given the early-to-her hour and the inherent stress of the situation.

She emerges when she wakes up, politely quiet in case she precedes everybody else.

The lights are still off and the curtains still closed, but Lucero is sitting on the couch with his TL lighting his face and Hilaria is draped across an armchair.

Wave wave.

At first it seems like he might be raising his hand to respond but then he just does a little conducty dance-type movement with it.  On closer inspection his fabric headband is covering his ears; he doesn't look up.

Well she doesn't want to start talking in case it is customary to be vewwy vewwy quiet during this rabbit-huntingest of hours or something. WAVE WAVE.

These ones catch his attention, and he jumps rather violently when they do.  "- Christsamongus!"  Hilaria doesn't stir; he palms the part of the headband over one of his ears and pulls it down around his neck.  "Good, ah - good morning."

"Sorry to scare you. I do not know how loud of talking is good at this time."

"This is fine," he says at a low but non-whispering volume.

"Is it okay to now take a shower?"

"Yes.  Do you need help in learning how to make it work?"

"Probably."

He leads her to the bathroom.  The shower is pretty fancy, but Lucero only walks her through how to turn on the main head and adjust the temperature before checking in about whether she wants to make use of more features.

Those features will do as long as it's clear how she can also turn it off again and there's a towel.

Yep. ...Can she read well enough to identify the soap and hair products.

She knows the words for 'hair' and 'soap'!

Lucero identifies the shower lotion and the face wash and the face moisturizer and the shampoo and conditioner and hair finalizer for her, then heads back to the suite's main room.

Hopefully no one will be offended if she comes out without her hair finalized.

She's a fifteen minute shower sort of person. Puts on the towel and pokes her head out to see if there's merch for her to wear yet.

There's merch!  Does she want the T-shirt with orange and purple butterflies in black or in white; does she want the enlogo'd sweatpants, capris, or high-low skirt?

Black and capris is good. Is there underwear?

In a few sizes.  Sports bra and briefs.

Cool. She retreats back into the bathroom with her merch, dresses, and emerges clad.

"Do you want to go shopping now, or later?

"Maybe after breakfast?"

He nods.  "Do you want leftovers from last night or something warm?"

"Leftovers is fine."

Lucero de-fridges the snack tree.  Grabs a pastry for himself, once Bella's got something.

Pastry om nom.

He mostly looks at his TL while they eat.  He reports that there's only one main option that's both open at this hour and practical to get to; it's a pretty walkable distance but they could rent a light vehicle if she wants.

"I fall down a lot. A car is probably better."

"Would this be good?"  He pulls up a picture of a vehicle that looks... not entirely un-car-like, though smaller, and open-topped.  It seems kind of golfcarty in utility though not necessarily construction.  Four wheels, two seats, self-powered.

"Sure."

Then Lucero can lead her downstairs and into a garagey area of the hotel.  He taps his TL in a few places and unlocks one of the little car things, which he hops in the front seat of.

She can probably figure out how to open a door and sit down. Seatbelt?

It's not what she's used to but neither is it very hard to figure out; it clips in the middle of her chest.  Lucero adjusts his at the shoulders before getting the motor going and throwing an "All good?" over his shoulder.

"I think so."

He checks and heads off once he's satisfied.

Outside, dawn is in the process of breaking but isn't quite there yet.  There's apparently a separate road for 'light vehicles', which varies from 'not that different from a regular road, just proportioned differently' to 'significantly more like a park trail than a city street'.

A ways into one of the parkier bits, there's... a smell.  Just a hint of one.

Ew? Was there a traffic accident?

Doesn't seem like it.  They see a handful of other people around but there's not really what could be called traffic.

It gets stronger as they go along.  Lucero seems unbothered.

She didn't just get her period, though she has to consider it for a second to be sure. God this is so awkward especially in Not Even Spanish. "Uh, I smell blood? Is someone - blood?" If there had to be a universe that spoke not-quite some Earth language why couldn't it have been English.

He's facing away from her on a moving open-top vehicle so it's kind of hard to make out his response, but she catches, " - probably a fountain!  [Something something], everything's fine.  Everyone is good."

"I don't know the [something something] words?"

He slows down, but not before an actual fountain of blood comes into view.  "- It's for healing."

Bella lapses into English in alarm so probably he won't be offended when she says "holy fucking shit is that a BLOOD FOUNTAIN".

"...I don't know the words?"

"Uh - disculpe -" Why do they have a motherfucking blood fountain. "Earth does not have this????"

He stops and unbuckles so he can turn around.  "It's for healing," he repeats.  "It's christblood, the blood of Christ Mirkes.  If Earth doesn't have a christ with healing blood it makes sense you would not have these."

"What."

"It's not only his blood.  Other people can add to it and then that becomes healing as well.  According to very complicated - math."

"I am not sure I remember the word healing right???"

"If a person is sick," fake cough-cough, "or hurt - ay! - it makes them not."

"Do you need to be healed of anything?"

"I don't think so."

He nods. 

"... Should I keep driving?"

"Can you drive farther from the fountain, I do not like the smell."

"Yes."  He buckles up and does a two-point turn and gets them on a set of light roads that avoids the fountain, pulling over to reference his device at one point.

It's only a few minutes before he pulls into a plaza and up to an overhung parking area.  Depending on Bella's sense of direction she might notice that the fountain is probably not far behind these buildings, but she can't smell it from here.

Her sense of direction is nothing special. She disembarks once they have parked.

The store appears to be of approximately the genre containing Walmart, K-Mart, and Target.  It's pretty empty; there are some elderly people walking around and a posse of twenty-somethings who look like they were probably up all night hanging in the snacks section.  She doesn't see any obvious staff yet.

Lucero gets a cart and tells her not to worry about the prices.

"I am getting clothes only or also other things?"

"If there are other things you need I expect that to be fine."

She'll at least start with clothes. Do they have jeans and t-shirts here.

They have pants, some of which are fairly jeanlike although the pocket layout is different and they aren't reliably blue.  It looks like bootcut mid-rises are in style.  T-shirts they pretty straightforwardly have.

Bootcut midrise is fine. If they don't have the "blue jeans go with everything" convention she'll get them in black. Solid t-shirts in a variety of colors. What season is it outside - or - "Am I going to travel with Arillegua?"

"If you want to, I think."

It's been warmish but it's hard to tell whether it's summer proper or just that sort of place.

"To cold places? Hot places?"

"Cold places in a few weeks, places like this until then."

Mostly short sleeves, a couple long sleeves, a cardigan. Their bra sizing is going to be completely unrecognizable, isn't it, she wildly eyeballs stuff and goes to try it on.

It's not that hard to find ones that are approximately comfortable for a minute, but it's hard to say if they'll stay that way in the long term.  She notices an employee-summoning button on her way out of the changing room.

If she ever knew any bra-related words in Spanish they have flown out of her head. She will get things that are comfy for a minute and have nothing obvious that's going to start chafing or stabbing her in the armpit an hour later.

There are chairs for waiting in and Lucero is waiting in one.  "What other things did you maybe want?"

"A - bag for travel. Notebooks and pens. Things for once a month." Which she might easily have forgotten about for another week or two and realized about suddenly on a tour bus, so, uh, thanks, creepy faith healing blood fountain. "Hairbrush."

"...Those sound fine."  He looks slightly confused.

Which of these things will she find first trawling the aisles?

Stationery supplies are over there!  Luggage is not too far thataway, but hygiene stuff is all the way back across the store.

There are some notable omissions in the selection.  (Though there is exactly one kind of toothbrush, should she want one!)

She gets a rollerbag in dark red and puts her chosen clothes and notebooks in it to roll them about. Actual toothbrushes, cool. She will get the exact one kind of toothbrush. Toothpaste?

Yep, if she's good with lemon flavor.

That is a weird choice but she has nothing against lemons.

Even after a while of walking around the hygiene section she still can't find the period products.

"The once a month blood thing? Are there things for it?"

"The... what?"

It's very unfortunate her guide in this matter is a man because now she can't tell if they don't have periods on this planet or if he just, as an individual failing, slept through sex ed. "The once a month woman blood thing. I don't remember the word for it."

"...Like the fountain?"

"No. Earth does not have the fountain."

"Something that Earth has, with blood, instead of fountains," he clarifies.  "For women."

"No."

"...I'm going to try to look it up."  He pulls out his TL and interacts with it for a couple of minutes.

"I still don't know what you mean."

Do they have those incontinence pads.

Yep.

She pulls a box. "These but for blood? Not a thing on Génesis?"

"...No.  I don't think so."

"Well, probably this will work," she grumbles, adding them to the suitcase.

"I'm sorry we don't have the thing you want."

"These will probably work. I do not like having to buy them but I will live."

"Okay.  Do you want anything else?"

She grabs a hairbrush. "I think this is enough things."

"If you think of anything later, we can get it then."  The checkout stations look weird and don't have anyone staffing them, but Lucero seems to know how to work it himself.

They can rent the same little car thing if her suitcase will fit in her lap?

She can't super see over it but she's not driving so sure.

Back to the hotel!  Avoiding the blood fountain!

Nobody else is up yet, still; blackout curtains keep the rooms dark.  Does she want Lucero to go pre-wash her clothes?

She usually doesn't bother herself, but it's nice of him to offer, sure.

Then she's left somewhat alone in the suite for a bit.

Notebook time.