No one's talked to her due to the sign yet. They don't always. She sets it up anyway, like clockwork, so everyone gets the chance.
"Oh, where are my manners. I'm Elizabeth."
"Shell Bell," says Bell. "My alts usually go by Bella and wind up as magical space empresses of one sort or another."
"Not yet. I'm working on it. No magic native to my world, you see, I have to get it here - that's the sort of thing I trade advice for."
"Interesting technological devices - interesting relative to what I can get at home, not relative to what the customer has. Sometimes money, when the aforementioned are unavailable. Right now we could also use suitably qualified allies or advice, as we're in the process of attempting to take over my world at a resource disadvantage."
"You name it," says Bell darkly. "Let me put it this way: the government we're planning to overthrow hasn't encountered a hiccup of significant-scale resistance from the parts of the country where we live in the last seventy-two years despite routinely kidnapping kids our age and younger and killing most of them for the entertainment of the viewers back home."
"Yes. Rather. And of course there are the other effects of malicious totalitarianism - the only reason I'm reasonably confident about the lack of rebellion is that Bar will loan me archives of Capitol newspapers, not just the District Four Gazette, and there aren't any prolonged, suspicious 'resource shortages' that I'd expect the media to cover for unrest with even there. You can see why we'd like the Capitol in question to go away."
"Probably not," she admits. "But I might want to get your perspective anyway, just for fun."
"Well, let me put it this way," she says. "If I want to give you whatever has the most value to you at the least cost to me, I need to know more about the kinds of things you take in trade."
"In the past, when it's not just straight-up money? Magic wand," says Bell. "Audio recording device and instructions on how to use it. I took water purification tablets once but I wouldn't find more of those specifically useful. A nifty little bag that I'm not sure if it's magical or just high-tech. I've been optimizing for objects that are small, because I've needed to hide them, but that will be less important going forward."
"The last person I asked bills herself as 'a hero' and carries a magic space hammer," Bell volunteers. "You'd need to have something exceptional for humans to make up for unfamiliarity with our world, I think, or just be a fantastically quick study."
"I wasn't intending to be the ally in question. But I could probably find you one or two," she says.
"That would be worthy of a finder's fee in the form of my undoubtedly entertaining advice," Bell says.