She jokingly pats a sleeve with the hand not holding the crossbow. “It's okay, it's okay.”

“— not that it's actually smart enough to be scared. I checked that in the design.”

Snort. "There's safeties on that even if you're trying to make something smart."

“Oh? I didn't look into what would actually be possible in detail, I just looked at the generated specs.”

She loads and fires again, hitting the target in about the same spot.

Tarinda adjusts her posture a little.

“That was more consistency than I expect I would have gotten before!”

She will accept corrections but — “it's easier to remember if I know what the goal or shape is, like, 'keep a straightish line from here to your foot' or something, not just specific adjustments.”

"Oh, hm, okay -" and she can modify her approach accordingly.

When it's going smoothly, learning things is fun! Shooting things is fun!

Tarinda gets a recurved longbow and another target presents itself for her.

“What's this? Are you proposing a totally unfair contest?”

"Not unless you want to have one!"

“Could be fun, but you had something in mind already.”

"I was just gonna practice too instead of staring over your shoulder the whole time."

“—well now I need to apologise for being self-centered.”

"You're fine. Do you wanna have a contest? We can see who improves more over previous best if you like 'em fair."

“I wanna suggest something thoroughly ridiculous instead but I have no ideas!”

"You can try to hit your target and I can try to hit your bolts in midair? That's unfair in your favor."

“I did not mean to include fairness one way or the other in the criteria! But sure, now I gotta see this!”

"I probably won't actually manage it," she says, nocking an arrow, "but who knows."

“I have shot a grand total of two bolts! I will be mostly practicing and not trying to evade you!”

She returns her attention to the target. Crrrk click pause kthup.

Tarinda shoots. She misses; her target catches her arrow.

They both have something to try again!

Wheee.

After several more she has managed to, on average, hit the center of the target.

Tarinda can't hit the bolts, although she gets surprisingly close and does knock one off course.

“You're not doing so well! Perhaps we should swap and you get the easier kind!”