"Thank you! You can call me by mine too — Hailey."

Hailey tried her best to match the bow, err a touch lower if she couldn't, and smiled back, before striding further into the studio and grabbing her water bottle off the desk. Seeing her in motion, she was clearly a girl who'd spent her mortal life thus far in motion, edges of lean muscles visible beneath the tight shirt and leggings.

"Make yourself at home, Romana," she said with a smile. "Can I get you a water? Or I have milk and a few juices?"

I chuckle softly. 

"Sure why not. Gosh it's... odd to be the one on the receiving end. Just water, I think." 

With a nod and a smile, Hailey stepped across to the kitchenette. She pulled a glass from a shelf under the counter, swiftly filling it with water from a filter attached to the tap, before turning and presenting it to Romana. Something about her seemed faintly stiller and smoother through the whole process than the subtle hints of restless energy she'd shown moments earlier.

"Here you go. You normally host, I take it? I haven't done much of either."

"Yeah. It's the least I can do when there's just... so much that I can do for free, more or less. I can do things with just serving tap water that helps, a little, and it's always... almost a little rude to not?"

"That makes a lot of sense. So many things to learn, though. You can enhance tap water?"

"Mhm!" 

Her finger flicks out to her glass, and there's a little... resonance of soft brown and light blue that ripples through it, leaving the water perhaps a little brighter and clearer in the glass, before she does the same to hers. 

"It's simple enough to control the temperature to get that extra pleasant cool feel, and even messing around with the mineral content and refining the energies a little with my comprehension of Water and something really simple? There's a bit more you can do if you can control the filter on the tap water or do a bunch of silly finnicky things with the pressure to get everything to mix just right or even go into messing around with the microflora, but as you might expect the results aren't especially useful - it can help your affinity with water a touch if it's something you do for months or years, but that's about it." 

Hailey nodded, watching raptly.

"I'm so curious what my affinities will turn out to be, what the best things will be for me to focus on. There's just so much to learn. I'm looking forward to it all, though I don't know where to start."

"Well, other than continuing foundation building, of course," she added with a laugh.

"Yeah - getting through the ranks really just... opens up a lot of doors. Can make it a lot easier to get something to work, even if you have to dig into some scholarly anti-affinity method." 

She takes out from her little sack a wooden circle, with five vials around a taijitu, labelled 'sawdust', 'phosphorus', 'silt', 'mercury' and 'water' laid out counterclockwise in a circle. There's some faint etchings on the plain oak. 

"This is the elemental testing apparatus I had lying around - it works best for Wuxing things, but should be good enough for the forseeable future for the rest. You can use it by just rest your hand and channelling a little blood and qi into it. Technically drinking the water will throw off the results a little 'til it clears your system, but that shouldn't really matter due to the size of the effect." 

She smiles encouragingly, and takes a small sip of her own cup, sighing contentedly as the cold water hits her tongue. 

Hailey nodded, then carefully rested her hand on the center of the wooden device, considering for a moment and then closing her eyes. She calmed herself, focused, and channeled.

The white dust glowed, softly and warmly, while the silver fluid had a faint tremble run through it, with the rest of the materials barely moving at all - especially the silt. 

There's a faint trace of lines of silver shot throughout the wood, too, and then...

A calm breeze spilled out of it, somehow tucking her hair around her ear as the wind ruffled through it, and a - 

There's a slight blur in the air, not persistent enough to really notice - 

And it dims, assuming she stops putting energy into it, returning to the resting state.

A smile crossed Hailey's face as her hair was tucked, and she opened her eyes just as she stopped channeling.

"Wow," she said, peaceful smile lingering.

She laughs back, quietly. 

"Already taken by the rush, I see~" 

She leans over and kisses her forehead.

Hailey froze.

(Did she jus—)

And blushed.

(Pretty mentor ki—)

Her mouth fell open for a moment.

What.

Giggles

Pet pet.

Hailey blushed harder, closed her mouth, and smiled softly, looking very very confused.

Gentle skritches smile down at her.

Coherence slowly blew back into her brain like a warm breeze. Her amazing caring pretty impressive mentor(?) just kissed her forehead, and was now scritching and petting her. And it felt good.

When was the last time anyone touched her, other than occasional brushed hands? (Not since she left.)

When was the last time anyone touched her kindly? (Had they ever?)

Why was she so affected?

"Um. What? Bwuh, but I don't, or... What?"

I press a finger to her lips.

"No need to worry about it~" 

I let out a last little laugh, and let my hands swiftly slip back to my sides. 

"Now, shall we get to the results?" 

Hailey touched her lips briefly, where Romana had touched.

(But why did...)

Hailey blinked, once, twice, then shook her head to clear it, blushing harder.

"Um. Right. Results are a great idea. Seems like Things Happened? Maybe even Meaningful Things?"

"That is rather the point of doing a test." 

I smile warmly. 

"For the traditional results... Seems like you have a pretty good affinity with Fire and mostly just trace ones for the rest of the Five Phases, and you're pretty typical in terms of Yin affinity for a female cultivator." 

I glance up at her ear and flushing face, taking it in a little bit more. 

"It seems like you have a pretty strong affinity for wind, and a good seed for manipulation of the Dao of Time, even. Those should both be quite useful to have." 

Hailey nodded, contemplating all this. "Fire sounds pretty reasonable as a fit. I always did run a bit hot."

She suddenly stopped, realizing her phrasing, and snapped her mouth closed, renewing the blush that had started to fade as she considered the results, and then blushed harder as she noticed Romana's attention so closely on her.

"Ahem. Yes, I realize I just said that. Anyway! Wind makes heaps of sense, and I'm really glad to hear it. I might've mentioned something about high and windy places?" She chuckled. "Time is an interesting result — not one I would've considered, but... maybe it makes a kind of sense? I dunno..."

She laughs again. 

"It doesn't have to be something you've really... expressed, yet? Souls are complicated, and there's a lot of things that just... matter less, when you aren't a cultivator."

Faint smile.

"I'm glad it came out in a way you like~"

She nodded, considering, blush gradually fading. "That's good to know. I guess I'm just confused because it maybe explains some tiny things? But they're at a level that it could just as easily be confirmation bias."

She started to relax a bit, smiling back.

"Yeah, I'm really glad too. I know Steely Student said I'd probably get something appropriate, reflection of my soul and all, but it was still a relief to see anyway."

"Yeah..." 

She takes a moment to bounce back to her seat a little and take a drink, giving her space. 

"Care to share? I'm curious how you could end up working with Time in that way so early on." 

Hailey nodded, and pondered for a moment. "The most obvious and blatant — and this should show how fuzzy the lot of them are — is during and immediately after the training vision for the Twenty-Four Flowing Fists. I have this faint recollection of the whole trip feeling dimly... out of sync. And then I get out of it and it's been barely a minute or two, rather than the whole hour-plus kata's time."

She hummed thoughtfully, frowning.

"For all I know, though, it could be normal to have daydreams or visions run that fast, and all this is just confirmation bias and reinterpretation. Mine never have, but maybe I just never tried hard enough."