She practices along with him, finding corresponding gears in her head and concentrating mightily to make just the one selected gear engage.

Ma'ar thinks that she's very quick at this kind of thing! He waits, gives her a chance to practice, and after a few minutes asks her if she's feeling ready to practice a reserves-meld with him. 

"I promise if you're not shielding right then I'll stop right away and not read your mind at all," he adds. "I can do that - I tested it, with, uh, the students who are bad at this." 

"Yeah, I think I can try it like that."

Ma'ar nods, and lowers his inner-level shields as obviously as he can, without moving anything else. He - offers out a sort of metaphorical handshake to her, or no, not quite handshake - it's not the same thing Mindspeech links do at all, maybe more like - bumping hips while dancing, or something...

- bump. Hello, Ma'ar's magic, this is Aza's magic.

There are a few awkward nudges and near-misses and almost but not quite falling into rapport, and then - there - their minds are still fully separate behind individual shields but their reserves are somehow a single pool, blended, still and quiet and almost thrumming with readiness for whatever they want to do next. 

And, on an entirely distinct level from that merging, Ma'ar reaches out with formal Mindspeech. :You can try some magic, if you want - you should be as strong as both of us together: 

Oooh. What would benefit from this that she knows how to do... well, there's weather magic but the classes always cleared large practice workings ahead of time to make sure they wouldn't make a mess...

...she hasn't worked on flying in a while. She wraps herself in a sling of force and wafts up, up, up, not too far to catch herself safely if she should make a mistake.

Ma'ar watches her, keeping his reserves fully open to share with her and also visibly SO DELIGHTED. 

WHEEEEEE but not too whee because she should practice slow and low before she tries to go whooshing through the sky like a bird. "Do you want a turn? I think I can pick you up."

"All right!" 

She scoops him too and whooshes him about gently.

It's a bit scary but also exhilarating!

Ma'ar manages to keep his low-level shields open to her in the right position the whole time. 

Then they can get in a fair amount of swooping before they're tired!

Ma'ar thinks this is AWESOME. 

He's also very, very tired by the end, despite not having done any magic himself, since he was lending his reserves as well. 

"You did great," he encourages her. "We're going to learn concert-Sight next, in the class - once I figure the shields out for that I can teach you as well." 

"Ooh! You could look at your clockwork!"

"That would be so helpful!" Ma'ar agrees. 

"It's really useful! Also pretty."

"Prettier than mage-sight?" 

"Hmmmm... pretty like calligraphy instead of like flowers."

"Ooh." Ma'ar is especially curious to see it, now, but it can wait until he's mastered the relevant technique and can show her. 

The session continues. 

Another week later Urtho finally writes back to Azabel about the book draft - or rather, sends the full draft back with his commentary scrawled in the margins. 

She has plenty of practice reading his handwriting by now and can get underway on her revisions. Compared to organizing the whole thing in the first place it's a piece of cake.

Urtho sends a brief note thanking her for the revisions once she sends the new draft back to him, and then is silent again for a while. 

Ma'ar complains that getting the shield-alterations right for concert-Sight without accidental mindreading is way harder than just sharing reserves - the shields are at a more similar 'level', just for different mental faculties, but even he is getting more of an earful, well, Thoughtsensing-ful impression of his classmates' heads than he would really prefer. He thinks he'll have it down in a few more weeks though. 

"You used to go around reading people's minds all the time, didn't you? I'm surprised it particularly bothers you to get glimpses."