But she pushes through, fighting it systematically and steadily, with the patience of a martial artist assured of her invincible defence. She doesn't escape entirely unburned, but acquires no wounds she feels require medical treatment.

By the time she is done, the room is largely empty - only two other people are still meditating, one with a serene look on their face, and the other with an agonised look.

Huh, so that's what the fire is like from the outside. Or from the back, anyway.

(Ow.)

Overall, Kedri is pretty nervous about whether Jasmine will make it, but there's a tinge of relief that Kedri won't have to actively strain for it herself. She's glad to know that she's strong enough to do it once in a row, but she's very much in agreement that twice in a row would be overwhelming.

(Ow.)

Right now there's nothing to be done but wait, and--ow--try to at least mentally recuperate, and hope that they won't need more serious recovery.

...they made it. Their first step towards something greater, towards becoming the finely honed and polished souls they want to be.

Over the telepathic link, she laughs with relief and triumph.

"One step down, ten thousand to go!"

"... we should really go get some sleep. It's late and we have classes tomorrow."

"Sleep definitely sounds like a good idea right now."

(even if it will not involve cuddling Tenida and telling her all about the day Kedri's had)

Then they will return to Jasmine's room to sleep. 

Kedri dreams that night of travelling the Silver Sea in a magical hot-air balloon, taking notes on what she finds on a tablet that might also be a book and/or a projection of her spirit. The notes are in prose, and she's kind of worried that she won't be able to think of a good way to make them into a poem like she ought to, but maybe if she reads them enough times it will be okay: there certainly are chunks of prose that she has memorised, it's just easier with poetry.

Well, there is a time for processing data and there is a time for gathering data. She can think about ways to sing the praises of a dragon's toughness after she finishes scratching a shed scale with rocks of standardised hardnesses to see which ones leave a mark.

Jasmine does not remember her dreams. 

And thus, in due time, morning is here. 

To Kedri, waking not in control of the body feels like a momentary disorientation, not unlike looking at Jasmine's thumb and seeing its lack of freckles.

"Looks like it's your turn for morning routine today," she says, with a bit of amusement.

"So it seems." Jasmine will go, get changed into suitable workout clothes, and stop by the cafeteria for her spire to obtain some savoury steamed buns to eat on the way to the training field - they're not late, but they did sleep as much as was possible without being late. 

When they arrive at the training field, Jasmine will suggest that Kedri should be fronting for the exercise, and will focus on yielding the front rather than striking up conversation with their classmates. She won't be the only one meditating before training, though.

"That makes sense. I'm sure I could use the practice at moving in this body, for one thing."

(Though hopefully there won't be anything to trip her up too much in public.)

They will be instructed in drill by someone who introduces himself as Major Ash, an enormous man with half a dozen banners strapped to his back in a sort of martial peacock-tail. Today, he says, you will be learning warmup stretches (in practice, only a minority of students really need this, but he's fussy and makes sure at least two nobles or bank-orphans are corrected with shouts or raps from his cane before the same errors are noted from anyone who is learning for the first time). For all his bombastic shouting and corporal punishment, he's an effective teacher - his words have an unnatural weight to them, hard to ignore and harder to forget. 

She's glad he's making sure everyone's on the same page to start. With how quickly they wanted her to start cultivating, she was kind of half-expecting to be dropped into the deep end on this too.

She's also glad--on the whole, anyway, given the shouting--that he's using attention- and memory-enhancing magic for her, until she learns enough of the Immortal Education to enhance her attention and memory herself. (She wonders if the two magics would synergise.)

She'd rather have a rap than a shout (less painful), but she makes no attempt to express this preference: it seems likely to be counterproductive.

(Far better to have neither, of course--she'd rather they'd gotten an instructor who was better at restraining himself--but then, in a more ~combat-oriented society a reputation for being like this is probably less likely to bite him.)

She does need the experience at moving with this body, but not all of it in the way she'd expected. She does have to adjust her proprioception to the slightly different shape, get used to the body's individual quirks, but a lot of what's metaphorically tripping her up is actually how easy the exercise is, relatively. She realises she'd been subconsciously expecting to be very out of shape, having been in no condition to exercise for quite a while now...but that was a different body.

Jasmine does rather think she's in good shape, yes. 

(Getting shouted at when you can't respond or fix the problem is surprisingly stressful - Jasmine normally doesn't find being drill sergeanted at very stressful at all, but if she can't control anything about the situation it's just random unpleasant stimuli. She wonders about the ability Kedri mentioned of shutting yourself off from the senses but can't figure it out and instead meditates for a bit.) 

Stretches will only take half an hour; for the rest of the two hour block, they will be running around a track. 

This is when the divide between those who have inhumanly vigorous physiques (the imperial princess, but also another woman with red and gold feathers instead of hair and a man with ice-blue hair), those who are merely in good shape (all of the orphans, most of the nobles, and a good number of the others), and the rest, who really are not becomes obvious. Major Ash proves to be uncannily good at turning up next to you and providing either an encouraging shout (if your will was flagging) or a shot of invigorating energy (if you were hitting a physical limit), keeping everyone training at an intense and exhausting pace for the entire duration. 

One-two one-two one-two one-two one-two

(She wouldn't say the running is directly enjoyable, as such, but it's so good to be strong again. It's good to know that she--that they--are capable of this.

As she runs, she imagines herself sent to an adjacent town in an emergency to fetch some vital medicine or piece of information. Can she make it?

It would seem that she can.)

In due time, they are done, and are sent off to shower and eat something properly filling before their "Ethics and History" class starts, in an hour or so.

Kedri is pretty hungry, but she's certainly not going to object to showering first. Besides, she knows better than to eat without having caught her breath yet if she can avoid it.

Showering is significantly less awkward today, now that it's not the first time she's navigating it.

Indeed, by the time they reach the cafeteria the idea of food is somewhat less acutely appealing, but there's still a fair amount of true-hunger.

On the menu there are more steamed buns, various stir-frys dripping with different sauces, and savoury rice porridge, on offer, among other things. Everything is heavy on the meat and light on the filler.

But then, having retrieved her food, she needs to find a place to sit - the entire cohort is eating in a single room. Nobody seems to have the courage to sit near the imperial princess, who is her usual stormily antisocial self, but otherwise, there is not enough space to not share a table with other people.

She looks at some of the Bank-orphans and wonders how different the sight appears from Jasmine's perspective, rich with associations Kedri hasn't formed.

"Is there anyone in particular we should sit next to, some friend you normally hang out with at lunch or something?"

Jasmine's mental voice sounds sort of pained. 

"... No, not really. I guess Garnet and his lot" (her thoughts gesture at a trimly dressed young man at the center of a knot of orphans.) "would be an okay choice? He was planning on being a merchant, I think, and we should try and have that sort of contact. But he's sort of irritatingly slimy. And I probably already know him well enough to be able to check if he's willing to buy stuff for a better than market price. We should probably find someone else."