"In a moment! I want to see how Ma'ar does on this try, first. Much neater." 

"Okay - should I throw the ball at it -"

"I'm ready." 

Toss!

His shield flexes less, this time, and he seems to have it well secured, it doesn't shudder or move noticeably either. The ball bounces off, more like it did with hers before. 

Ma'ar looks down at it. He's learned his lesson about speaking his mind out loud, here, but: :If someone's throwing a weapon you don't want it to do that, you'd want it to land by you so you can grab it before they can: 

"Excellent!" Snowstar is saying. "Much less power expenditure, results just about as effective - good work." 

:I guess ideally you'd want to have the shield fling it right back where it came from but that sounds hard: she muses.

:Oh. Hmm. You could make it ricochet but it'd be hard to aim... Maybe if you were fast you could make the shield catch it, and then throw it, like with imaginary magic hands...: 

"Azabel?" Snowstar said. "I would like to see yours now." 

"Okay!" Leaf parallel to the ground, stemmed to nothing because that's all imaginary anyway - are the gears all right yes they are, are the energies all right they are too - step!

He looks so impressed. "Very good! Most people find it challenging to stay grounded properly even at that height - how did you figure it out?" 

"I'm not doing anything to the ground, the ground is just helping me imagine it right, so if I figure out how to imagine it right anyway, it doesn't matter where I am. I checked that all my gears were in the right places with Mindhealing-Sight."

"Ha. What a clever trick to have! You may end up finding that very helpful, for mastering more unusual mage-techniques. Anyway, congratulations. Both of you. You are making excellent progress. Hmm - I think I will send over one of the assistants to give you some more complicated exercises for your day off." 

"Okay, thank you!"

A young Journeyman mage in his early twenties comes over and explains some harder exercises with barriers - making one move away from you or toward you, changing the angle, changing the shape to be flat or bowl-shaped, shaping the surface so objects bounce at different angles. 

Oh, the angles one sounds fun! She starts sketching out a design for a paper target to aim at.

Ma'ar has managed to either pace himself better or just be better fed and rested going into this class, and isn't as exhausted, but he's not going to try his luck any more. He writes down some notes in his own notebook; he saw some students had them instead of just sheets of paper, and got up the courage to ask a hertasi, and they very helpfully found him one. 

:- Do you maybe want to practice tomorrow?: he asks Azabel, shyly. :I mean, both of us together. I could throw the ball for you: 

:Sure, if you want! When? Here?:

:We could do in the morning, when class would normally be? We might have to go walk somewhere else if there's a different class that practices here that day: 

:Sounds good to me! I want to learn how to tap ley-lines and nodes so I can practice longer...:

:That would be so good! I don't know how hard it is but maybe we can ask Adept Snowstar next class: He's starting to feel a lot braver about asking questions, now that he's seen more of other people's and how they went over. 

:Yeah, I'm gonna: She writes this down. And then she writes down a bunch of experiments she wants to do. Can shields hold water, be umbrellas... can Skan wreck one, and does it make a difference if he claws it or just swats it... can she squish stuff in shields, if she gets the hang of moving and reshaping them...

Ma'ar is also thinking of things he wants to try, though they're much more, well, fighting-focused. He can make a shield to block a knife; can he make one to block fire, or levinbolts? Can he make a shield 'thin' and 'light' enough that he could wear it all the time on his body, without it being in the way? He might have to eat more if he's burning mage-energy on it constantly, but it's not like the dining hall has a shortage of food, and he would feel much better about going there if he knew how to shield properly.

When class is dismissed, he says goodbye to Azabel and that he'll see her tomorrow, rather than asking to come over; his mind feels tired in some way even though his body and Gifts don't, and also he wants to test if the dining hall feels less scary, and if he can correspondingly look less scared and maybe not get his plate milked. 

"See you!" And she goes to find Skan for Skan-requiring experiments.

Ooh ooh ooh experiments???