Well, his magical grip is still very clumsy and the shield mostly wobbles and deforms a bit in the middle, but it does seem to 'tighten' a bit once he's grabbed it firmly enough. It's tiring, though; it feels sort of like hold up a heavy object with just his fingers, except it's in his head. 

Huh. (Having these new senses is extremely cool.) Maybe if he had built it himself and been holding it the whole time it would be easier to hang onto. Can he "poke" it back into shape where it's deformed? (Also is Starwind watching him poke it and does he want him to stop? No, don't think about that, if he wanted Abras to stop he would say so, focus on the magic.)

Poking it back into shape does work, though not perfectly, it looks a bit like dented armour that's been hammered back out. That seems likely to be a finesse thing more than a fundamental limitation, though. 

Starwind lets him play with it for three or four minutes before interrupting. "Are you ready to attempt taking it down? I might show you the motion initially and you try the rest alone." 

"Yeah, okay. --When it comes down, where is the magic going to go?"

A thin smile. "If you do it properly? Back to you. If you do it improperly, much will be lost to the ambient currents and you will be considerably more tired at the end of this lesson." 

"Okay. I'm watching now." That's nice that magic can be pulled back in and reused like that; he looks forward to learning how to be efficient with it.

Starwind goes into his mind again and shows him a motion that feels sort of like peeling a strip off the shield and sucking it up like a noodle, back into his centre. He backs off. "You do the rest." 

He peels off a strip, drops part of it, sucks part of it in and spills the rest. Then he tries again with another strip. At some point in there he's stopped doing the holding it up with his fingers thing.

"Not bad," Starwind says, grudgingly, when he's done and about half the total energies tied up in the shield have made it back into him. "Now raise another one, this time on your own." 

He checks his center and ground and starts pulling magic again; this time he gets the recognizable beginning of a shield into place before his brain yells "don't do anything don't do anything you were supposed to not be doing anything" and he flinches and knocks the foundation out from under it.

The spell collapses on itself and then on him. He doesn't get any of the energy back but it does feel like the equivalent of, oh, dropping a heavy book on his own head. 

"Boy!" Starwind snaps at him, raising his voice. "Why did you do that?" 

Oh no bad-feeling thing and loud noise! He flinches back, which since he's sitting down means he almost falls over. "I--sorry. I didn't mean--I screwed it up." He's not sure what sort of "why" Starwind is asking and what will just sound like an excuse. He runs a hand over his scalp despite not having been literally hit on the head. "I'll start over." He starts over, now subconsciously expecting an unpleasant sensation and a loud noise. In the background of his awareness, his shoulder muscles are starting to hurt from how tense he's been holding them.

Starwind stretches and sits back, waiting without interrupting him again. 

Pull some magic and put it where it goes. Do not flinch. Pull some magic and put it where it goes. Pull some magic and put it where it goes. Try not to notice that he still feels awful and like things can only pretend to be good. Just keep pretending and maybe it will be true. Pull some more magic and put it where it goes. He's probably going slowly enough to result in structural problems even if Starwind doesn't mind the wait, like trying to lay bricks with the mortar half-dry.

Starwind probably does mind the wait, but he keeps a lid on his impatience and only sighs audibly a couple of times and rolls his eyes once. Eventually, Abras ends up with something sort of vaguely shield-esque – it's even less cohesive in form than Starwind's demonstration, and variable in thickness and shape – and Starwind lifts a finger. 

"Stop there," he says. "A reasonable first attempt." Unclear if he means that. "You go so slowly – it would be easier to pull smoothly if you went faster. Moondance tells me that you are cautious with your power, because it was uncontrolled before. If you do fear your own strength, well, note that this is a shield and there is no way for it to hurt anybody." 

He reaches behind him and picks up a pebble. "Now I test it. Ready?" 

"What am I supposed to be ready to do, just hold it up?" (This is a dumb question, but knowing the answer should be obvious doesn't equal knowing the answer. He does that "grab the structure and hold it in place" thing again, denting it in the process.)

"You need not do...whatever that is that you are doing," Starwind says dryly. "Simply hold onto the cord of energy remaining between it and you."

(There is one, Abras will notice, with a separate streak from each layer he put down.) 

Starwind throws the pebble. It dents the shield a bit more and wobbles it but bounces off and falls to the ground. "Not bad," Starwind admits, again, and comes back with a heavier pebble. "Keep holding it. As long as you can." 

The thing he's doing that he needs to not do is trying not to do things every time he tries to do things and wow that thought stopped making sense halfway through thinking it. He tries switching from holding onto the shield to holding onto the cord of energy; it would probably be easier to hold if it was a unitary thing and not a cobbled-together mess, but it survives his clumsy attempt to grab it. And then he will hold on to it as long as he can. He's already getting a bit tired, and leaning his elbows on his knees.

His shield makes it to the third rock, now about the size of his palm, and then breaks, though not in a completely uncontrolled way and Abras gets some of the energy back via the cord he's holding, in a way that's more like slurping it up involuntarily than being whacked by it. Starwind flings up some kind of transparent barrier that catches the rock just before it hits him in the nose. 

"Good," he says, and almost sounds like he means it. "Sloppy, but first attempts invariably are. Take a minute to catch your breath and clear your mind, please, and then you rebuild it again. Better this time." 

Not getting hit in the nose is good! He does try clearing his mind but it inevitably starts trying to get on the subject of how he never asked 'Lendel what his first lessons were like and now he'll never get to compare stories because Tylendel is DEAD and yeah he should just start that second attempt now.  His second attempt he aims for fast-and-smooth rather than slow-and-careful; that means there are fewer fault-lines because he has less time to flinch but the ones that remain are worse. The result is easier to hold onto but the weakest point is weaker, so if Starwind tests it again it will break sooner than the last one.

It does, in fact, break with the second pebble. Starwind sighs. "You overcorrected. Next one, a little more slowly is all right. Also, you need to stop flinching. What are you afraid of? The magic will not harm either of us even if you fumble it, the power of this spell is too low." 

"I believe you. I have bad habits. I'll try again." He checks his center and ground. He's not at all confident he can do this. Even if he managed never to flinch from trying not to do anything, he would still be flinching from trying not to think about 'Lendel being DEAD. He's not sure if he's being a weakling for thinking about 'Lendel this much or being callous for trying not to think about him but it's definitely one or the other. ('Lendel would probably have reassured him it was neither but he can't reassure him because he's DEAD.) Shit, he was supposed to be trying the shield again.

Starwind...doesn't sigh audibly, and he does start tapping his fingers on the floor impatiently but then stops. He watches Abras for a while. 

"Would it help that I show you the technique again?" he says. "Bad habits will happen, when Gifts awaken in the manners yours did. The only way around it is to practice more."