Exhale-force-air-out-strand-in-complete.

Stagger back.

"And break." 

Nod, slide apart, sigh faintly, tremble rally back.

"...You're really kinda totalled, aren't you?"

"...Yeah. Though..." 

She drew back, wiping her arms slowly and taking the time to breathe.

"My body is mostly fine, I'm not too tired, too worn, and I know that there's still a good bit more in the tank once it settles down, I'm just not..."

"No one's ever fuckin' ready to walk this path. Seriously." 

She pressed her hands firmly against her shoulder. 

"Regular exercise is hard. There's a good bloody reason why so many people are couch potatoes, and you still haven't adapted to this body of yours. For now..." 

She patted her head gently, and escorted her back to the kitchen to sit and drink after another quick cleaning burst of qi. 

"Rest here. You don't need to do anything, beyond just drinking your fill. Tell me if I can get anything to you."

Breathe deeply sip down, heat slowly draining away as the cups of water slide down her throat. 

She stared forward, letting the little forced patterns of accelerated thought to clear way into a gentler flow, sitting there, the faint traces of vestigial thoughts still inside, the vague narrative impressions forming into something usable enough, if cleaner and further back then oh so long ago. 

Breathe like you mean it, feeling out the limits of her lung capacities causal extension, air filling her chest then emptying out into a void at every step 

This is training too. 

More water as her throat faintly tickled with the desire, stay clear, rest hard. 

There's a slight squint in her eyes, a faint twitch back as she watches, hand pressing gently against the one simply resting upon the table. 

...Rest like you mean it, breathe like you mean it, because this too is cultivation. 

Drink, just because the faint cold and interesting texture of the water in her mouth made it a little easier to focus, gently sigh and sip back. 

"Could we move this to the cultivation circle and put on some gentle ambient music?" 

"'course." 

She popped out her chair, gave her hand a tender stroke for a little lingering touch, and filled a handful of cups for her to drink, before walking her out there and putting on a continuous mix of trance music.

She pushed the sofa back into place, and they sat together on the sofa. 

She let her eyes flit shut, sometimes, letting herself feel the call of exhaustion, because if anything is exhausting it's forcing yourself not to feel it, the siren song of sleep washing over like waves across a beach. 

The music was wonderful, of course, the wide reverberating synths adding more 'room' for her focus to drift in, and helping keep the relaxation up.

She just sat there, for a good half-an-hour, occasionally letting her hand squeeze against Ruby's, just because it helped, to have that firmness, the faint clean smell of her hair, the extra warmth of a body beside her, as she took her time to recover. 

And most of all, she hoped it helped.  

Her hand squeezed back hers, letting her feel the lines on her palm, the contours of the muscles, the firm bone behind the softness of skin, meditating and listening together, occasionally letting her breathing drift together with hers as she did her own meditation. 

"Mind if I practice some forms myself? 

Honesty is important, but that doesn't mean that she should be rude, or let the calm slip away. 

"Not substantially. It's... nice to sit with you, though."

Firm hand squeeze affectionate smile. 

"'m sure it'll be nice to watch this, too, Silv." 

Faint not quite hoarse snort. 

"Now I'm curious." 

Warm calm smile, fingers drifting down, fingertips sliding against each other as she slowly steps out, her sword eagerly sliding up from her hip to her left hand.

She dances through the katas, going through her forms at what would probably be something like half-pace for a mortal, stepping through a complicated series of slashes and slices that make her sword glint brilliantly in the uneven light. It slowly transitions from what seems like mundane sword work to something more exotic, little flicks that emit faint streaks into the air, tiny shifts of her grip that let her sword angle adjust in impossible ways from weird points that it levers from, odd spots where her hand loosens or shoves the blade around, strikes going up to the sky, or downwards strikes that flow into her simply hoping on the sword and gliding around on it into strikes, mixing in the techniques with the simple solidity of the clean parries and blocks she used.  

It even aligns oddly well with the music, at times, and she smiles peacefully throughout the whole process as she puts on her little show. 

It was honestly a little mesmerizing to watch her - from the way her muscles rippled when she went through her motions, the faint sheen of sweat across her skin, the gentle red glow of strain in her muscles, to of course the mastery and absurdity of watching her play with flying swords. 

It was relaxing in a... rather different way, and it let the rest of the track pass swiftly enough, as she slowly settled in to meditate a bit more dedicatedly to get her mental energy to a closer to default level for the rest of the mix. 

"You're ready." 

There's no need for words as she pulls her up, and holds out a simple knife. 

"Hold this." 

She wrapped her hand around the simple leather grip, feeling the way that the steel rested in her hand, slowly sliding her hand around the natural range of motion. 

Balancing it in her hand was a little awkward, her hand instinctively shifting to a few different places, holding it against her palm in slightly different places that made it hard to get a good understanding of just... what she was supposed to do with it, because everything didn't feel quite right.

"Hmm..." 

Consideringly clasps chin. 

"No knife, sword qi, or any of that sorta thing natural. You'd be fine with that, though." 

"Lesse." 

She clenched her hand around her blade thoughtlessly, and the steel just got yanked out of the socket, and letting it shift and flow into different forms - spears, staves, hammers, axes, even shuriken and simple geometric shapes to hold. 

She blinked as she tried to wield each - feeling the somehow changing weight and balance from the manipulations, a hand or tow going to hold it in the handful of different ways that she could. The longer weapons just felt awkward, the extra parts to keep track of too complicated to naturally get quite right, too many parts to keep out of the way and too much leveraging to get, no matter the motion when she really tried for it, while the projectiles were natural enough to do something with, at least, though accuracy and the tricks of flicking and discarding the shifting weapons. 

The fluid trails of glossy metal fell back into her hands, flash welding against it 'til it melded into the mass, even as it shrank to form some of the smaller items - a simple hatchet that was decently easy to flick around with her wrist and slash out against the air, though the stem of the thing was hard to grip and the motion of it was just a little unsatisfying. 

Toss it up in the air, snatch it back out, and throwing even the ball wasn't something that she expected that she would have a good experience with from the limited motions that felt the most natural, though shifting through these was... 

Suprisingly natural, the changes of the material blending into the balance of her weight and motion. 

"Hmm." 

The steel flew back to her, shifting in her hands back into the basic knife. 

"You don't have anything that quite fits? There's more exotic options out there that you can try, but the differences make it look more like there's... not frankly a ton that you can do there. Honestly, you're best bet is probably to go for something for short sword-y - or somethin' shiftin' that... really isn't possible at your rank. Sword techniques are some of the best optimized ones out there, and your compatibility is... fine?"

Faint huff.

"Define 'fine'."

"You don't have any weapon affinities, natively. There's ways to develop anything, and your build tends more towards going for something lighter and swifter, and there's a bunch of subtle differences but..." 

Vague wave.

"There's plenty of things that people just don't think about 'cause there at best theoretically ok if they put effort into it. There's not a lot to say? It means that fighting conventionally 'll be a little harder for you then some, but it's not... too different." 

"That makes sense, if a touch disappointing." 

"So..."