"Eeeeeheehee!" she cackles. Who needs to be physically on the ground, there is air between her and the ground, that's good enough - who needs the actual ground, even, what she's doing is organizing her thoughts, making those gears click that way, that has nothing to do with the ground at all and she can do it in the air!

Ma'ar smiles too, the most natural and real smile she's seen from him so far; mostly he's just delighted to see her so excited. "- Are you trying to fly?" 

"I can't actually fly like this, I'm still standing on something and I'll fall if I zoom it around much, but I'm putting together the bits I'll need!" She steps off the shield. "D'you want a turn?"

"Sure! Uh, I should try the normal shield first before I see if I can stand on it too." He rolls the ball back to her, rather than throwing it for her to catch - it seems very likely it'd just hit her - and then whips together a shield. He does it very fast, in well under a second, and it's more powerful and springy than hers, but also sloppier and seems to use at least three times as much mage-energy. 

"Huh," she says, and she gives the ball a toss. Her aim is fine.

His shield blocks it without difficulty; it seems to do a mix of flexing a little and also sort of absorbing the force, like soft clay or putty, the shield moves but not in a way that reaches Ma'ar, and the ball falls limply to the ground rather than bouncing off. 

"Oh, cool... again?"

"Sure." He rolls the ball back to her. Puts a tiny bit more power into his shield. "You can do it harder." 

She thwacks the ball into the shield as hard as she can.

Ma'ar concentrates and bends his knees, bracing himself against it a little as though catching the blow with his physical body; he isn't doing that, it seems like purely a concentration-aid, the way having her feet on the ground helped her stay the other kind of grounded. 

His shield flexes more against it and doesn't quite dampen all of the momentum, when the ball fall it rolls back a little ways toward her, and Ma'ar breathes out in a little oof, but his shield is still intact. 

"Very good power on that!" Snowstar calls from across the room. "Azabel, in a moment I want to see what you were doing before." 

"Sure, whenever you like! - you look like you're putting a lot of power in those, how come? Is that making it faster?"

Shrug. "It's - how I do it? I guess maybe I do it that way because if someone's throwing a dagger at you or shooting with a bow and arrow then you really don't want it to get through." 

This earns him some very odd looks from the couple of students practicing nearest them. 

Ma'ar thinks this is very unfair! He's pretty sure he wasn't looking scared at all just then! 

"I guess not! I think with most things it's easier to start slow and get fast than to start fast and get neat. I don't know if this is one."

"I'll - try to do another one except slower and neater." It's suddenly a lot harder to concentrate, though, with the unwanted feeling that other people are now paying attention to him. 

"What do you think of it as?"

"Um. Like I'm putting my hands out to block it? Except they're my magic hands, not my real hands, so I can stretch them bigger and make them any shape, and make them - flatter, or stretchier, or all that..." 

"Huh! I guess that makes sense. I do shields around my whole me like an eggshell but this kind I was doing like a leaf. And then when it wobbled too much I gave it a stem."

Ma'ar does not seem to find this mental image reassuring! "Leaves...aren't that strong," he says uncertainly. "I could try making mine - thinner and harder, though, like an eggshell. Maybe an eggshell with cloth glued on the backside, so if it breaks it'll bend or get floppy but not just fall into bits..." 

"It's not a real leaf, I just like to imagine them as things that grew into place so they don't have holes - cloth has holes. I don't have to imagine it as something strong, just something tight."

"Hmm." He looks thoughtful. Gets to work on a very thin but tight and tidy-edged shield. 

Snowstar wanders over to watch halfway through. 

"Hi! You wanted to see my platform thing?"