Okay, yeah, it would be an adventure.

They both nod, then turn to Romana.

"We'll try it."

"And if we can make it work for ourselves, we'll pack our things and take your offer of moving in at the Aerie."

"But um," Zoey asks, her cheeks turning a bit pink, "can we get rooms together, or next to each other?"

"Alright." 

She taps her fingers against the kitchen table. 

"There's a few things I can try? Probably the simplest thing would be to give you a martial cultivation technique and have you two try to practice it. The body purification effect should be relatively obvious, as should the way it can get a bit more out of your physicality than it should. I could walk you through a compatible basic elemental technique - those are pretty hard to do without having already gotten your cultivation started a little, but it has the upside that you won't necessarily have to deal with getting messy with impurities. Oh and... the standard method for transmitting cultivation techniques involves hypnotic manuals? They aren't mind control per se, but they're easier to visualize than ordinary text should be, and can facilitate a... guided experience that makes it easier to retain the lessons and focus on them. Avoiding that might be a bit of work, but it should be doable with a bit of patience..." 

She reaches her hand up to stroke behind her neck. 

"Do you have any thoughts there? Actually, I should probably ask if there's anything you're especially interested in learning in general. No reason not to start as you mean to go on." 

"Ooh if we can pick I wanna learn to make stuff, like maybe weapons or tools or something!" Zoey bounces in place a bit.

Zoey's just the cutest. Dawn gives her a partially-hidden sappy look for a moment.

Then she looks back at Romana. "Body purification effect, huh? Just how messy does it get?"

She represses a little chuckle under her breath herself, eyes hiding a little under her bangs. Zoey really does seem like a cutie. 

"Very. As in 'be ready to run off to a shower with two bottles of drain unclogger standing by' messy, if you push it hard enough." 

She turns to Zoey. 

"Proper crafting as a cultivator takes a bunch of prerequisite skills, but we can certainly help you down that path. The closest I can get you to starting directly on that would be doing something like the Uncoiling call - the wire generation technique I showed you earlier - or something like the rustless ripple, which works by loosely aligning it towards one of the five elements, and in that case, metal." 

"Sounds like that'd be convincing on its own. Also sounds like we should wear clothes we're ready to throw out anyway, and maybe practice on a tarp the first time."

"Oh there's elements? How do they work? Is it like the western elements or eastern or something else? Wait no you said metal that sounds like eastern but it could be something else too oh this is so cooooool!"

"It's a daoist thing - Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water. Them and yin and yang are sort of... the most fundamental elements backing the practice of cultivation and making up spiritual things. Everyone comes with an alignment within the five elements, and a balance of yin and yang, but for... call them 'aspects' like say, 'sword', 'saber' or 'sun', it's a bit more... subjective and blurry. Less - fundamental, in a way." 

She nods firmly. 

"Cultivation is cool." 

"Yeah, that sounds about right. As for what technique... Probably the best thing for that would be the fundament fist? I've got the opening of it memorized well enough to teach it without a manual and it shouldn't be particularly picky about getting it working. I could probably find something that would fit either one of you better, but it's traditional to learn at least a little of it anyways so..." 

She rolls her shoulders in a loose little shrug. 

"Got a place in mind to do it? You should probably do it one at a time - believe me, you do not want to be waiting in line when you've got the mess of a black day on you." 

Zoey looks over at Dawn. "Move the furniture?"

"Each get a chair?"

"Yeah!"

And they set to moving the two armchairs to the edges of the living room, then move the couch together, and then Dawn moves the coffee table while Zoey fetches a big tarp from the closet.

"I'll go first," Dawn says while Zoey's spreading out the tarp, "lemme just change into something I don't mind losing."

She heads back to her bedroom.

"You two really are two peas in a pod..." 

She stretches out a little, and gets up, taking her place opposite the spot they've set aside, waiting for her to get back. 

"Eheh, yeah," Zoey replies with a very faintly blushy grin.

Dawn's back a moment later in a sports bra that looks maybe a touch small and gym shorts that look like they've seen better days.

"Okay, so where do we start?"

Her eyes wander down her form - mostly in the respectful way you'd expect from a teacher examining the body of a student, but well... 

With a body like that, there's no helping indulging a little more than that. 

"You can do some stretches - that's a sensible enough place to start normally. But beyond that... You need to focus on the feeling of your heart and the vitality running beneath your skin. It's not just about the motions, it's about harmonizing your breath and your body with them. You should follow them, but what's most important is for you to watch as close as you can, take a breath and a heartbeat to blank your mind, remember the impression of the movement, and try to follow that, more than just a mechanical mimicry." 

She demonstrates a series of punches, a few series of jabs, the little way that she rolls her shoulders and sets her arms and presses. It doesn't look like anything special, just textbook clean blows at first, but there's an extra weighty woosh to her sleeves when she goes through the motion, a little extra rush to the extension of her arms, a gentle weight to the slowed down motions that makes it feel like she's following through with more than just the mass of her body. 

Dawn does what she can to steady herself, to clear her mind, and to recreate the feeling of Romana's movements more than just the motions themselves.

It takes her several tries to start getting it right.

Eventually she does, though, and something about her movements seem to have more weight to them, more heat, more intensity.

Zoey watches, rapt, eyes wide, cheeks flushed. She can see the moment when Dawn starts getting it, when she starts punching with more than just her arms, more than just her body.

It's not exactly simple. The fundament fist isn't just one thing - not a harmonization of yin and yang, not a conjugation of the five elements, not a harmony of the 3 qis. It takes a little bit of coaxing and adjusting, explaining the flow of it and how it should feel in her body, alongside a bit of help from her highlighting areas with that little trick of the light of hers to get it to work but eventually... It does.

It's something more basic than that, something that she can feel in the strain of her muscle and the flow of her skin, the way her hands start to whistle a little more, the way her body feels like she's been at it for hours and hours, yet feels primed and pumped and loose in a way that she never knew she could be. It's straining, feeling like this, blood pumping in her ears, sweat sliding along her skin, turning from what she's used to into something darker, oily and rank and ripe and rich in all the wrong ways. It coats her skin like tar, in little grimy greasy streaks slowly pouring out of every pore, the tarp quickly saturating with the almost muddy black grime as it pours off of her. 

A few minutes after it starts, she waves her hand softly, and reaches out her finger to boop her nose. 

"We should probably stop before it gets too bad. Off to the shower with you?"

"Oh! Lemme get you something to change into after, and an old pair of flip-flops to keep you from dripping on the way there, and a trash bag for those clothes!"

She dashes off. 

"Oh and..." 

She glances her eyes down to her ring, and smiles lightly. 

"I can give you a perfume to help with the smell - I don't think anything mortal would help with it, but at times like this, I don't think you'd mind something a little on the stronger side."