Katie breathes deeply and focuses as she makes a few more attempts. She doesn't make the same mistake again. Some miss entirely but a few get pretty close to the bullseye.

. . . Good! This is honestly farther than Tazich expected her to get today [ although she won't show it yet ]. She'll check to see, does Katie look tired?

A bit. The sight of a boulderous woman watching her approvingly is steeling her determination, though.

Katie looks so steeled!

She offers the lead ends of two wooden sticks half her own height, her posture is open—Katie is free to put down the bow. "These are your swords."

"Two of them?"

"I asked you—

actually, I don't remember you answering."

She draws her swords.

"Yeah, like this." Fighting stance.

"Is one large weapon an option, or is that not the Urgathoan way?"

She considers this.

"It's not particularly Urgathoan, it's just the best." Hm, I sound kind of petulant.

"One might say I like my weapons like I like my women." She pokes Tazich's belly affectionately, just in case it's not already obvious that she means 'large and heavy'.

Her swords are HUGE!!

"You've already practiced, then? I thought you said you hadn't."

"No, just read a lot of storybooks."

"Mm.

. . . Humor me. Try them first and see how it feels."

"A reasonable request." She takes the sticks in her hands and tries to match Tazich's stance."

She stabs the practice dummy unerringly with her right sword. It's almost like her arm didn't move.

She steps back, gesturing for Katie to try.

"Like this?" She clumsily mimics Tazich's technique, blunt wooden sword-point bouncing awkwardly off the dummy.

"Hit it straight. Like your sword is going to go through." She moves in to take Katie's spot, demonstrates again, and steps back.

Katie does her best, but she has trouble understanding how she's supposed to move in a straight line with limbs that move by bending.

She's like a tiny baby Tazich didn't even know she liked tiny babies

"Move like you're going to punch through it. You're throwing your fist through it, so fast you don't have to move it in an arc." Punchmovementdemonstration. Stabmovementdemonstration. 

"I think I see, but it's a little awkward because you've gotta turn your wrists all sideways so the blades are actually pointing at the target, and then presumably you've gotta be able to turn them back quickly to block attacks. Two handed weapons seem a lot simpler than this and lifting them would probably get me jacked quicker."

"Have you ever learned how to control a two-handed anything, without first learning to control the single-hand parts of that thing by themselves?"

"I don't think two-handed swords are made by gluing two one-handed swords together."

"You use both hands."

"You are doing two one-handed tasks."

"Yeah, just like how babies have to learn how to hop on one foot before they can walk with both feet at the same time."