Skan lands. "Oh, ssorry, were you bussy?" 

Ma'ar is still not moving. 

"We were practicing - Ma'ar, this is Skan, Skan this is Ma'ar, he's in my class - Ma'ar are you okay?"

Ma'ar does not look especially okay. He doesn't answer right away because he's barely processing the fact that she's talking to him. 

"Skan, I think he's, uh, scared, can you give us some space?"

"Aww." But Skan obediently backs off, moving on the ground rather than taking off again in case flying is itself scary. Gryphons are not optimized for either bipedal or quadrupedal walking on the ground; he can move effectively enough but looks ungainly and kind of silly doing it. 

Ma'ar tries to unfreeze himself, keeps the shield up but takes a few deep breaths and focuses on Azabel. "- Sorry, what was that?" 

"I tried to introduce you but it did not seem you were ready to be introduced."

"I - oh - sorry..." Is this another situation where it's stupid and inconvenient to be scared. 

"It's not like a huge deal... do you want me to ask my Mindhealing teacher about un-scaring you?"

He can't tell if she means literally right now or later and either way the idea is the opposite of reassuring. "No thank you. We can - I can meet your friend if he. Comes up slowly." This isn't going to be pleasant but Ma'ar is fairly sure that if he keeps the shield up, he'll be able to keep himself from either running away or freezing so much he can't introduce himself back. 

"Are you sure? I could tell him to come back later..."

"No, I don't want to be rude to your friend." 

"Skan, you can come back over, just do it real slow please?"

He will be soooooooo sloooooooooow and careful and keep his claws tucked under even though it's uncomfortable to walk like that. He can't do anything about the beak, it's not his fault his beak is bigger than Ma'ar's entire head. 

"Hi Skan," Ma'ar says, in a voice that's only slightly higher-pitched than usual. 

"Skan's very big now but when I met him he was this tall," she gestures a foot off the ground, "and fuzzy."

That's so hard to picture but Ma'ar nods politely anyway. 

"Ssh--" Skan stops and clears his throat and tries to talk with as little sibilance as possible in case that's scarily gryphonish. "She was so impatient for me to grow enough that she could ride me."  

Nod. 

"It's fun, you can see so much from up there - his eyes are better than mine though." Is this helping, she can't tell.

Ma'ar still seems kind of tense, but only as tense as he did the entire first time she walked with him to her house - his baseline level of tense has lessened a bit. 

"We can practice now?" he suggests. "Skan could watch." 

"...Sure." If he is going to learn how to do magic at all he will probably need to learn how to do it scared since he is scared ALL the time. They can resume their planned agenda.

Ma'ar is quieter, but doesn't seem to have a notably harder time doing magic at this level of scared. (Most of his magic use in the past has been when he was very scared.) He does keep tending faster and sloppier on his own shields, but notices and corrects himself. Over fifteen minutes of practice, he seems to get used to Skan's nearby presence more. 

Skan is holding so still to watch and he cannot wait to tell Azabel about this after so she can be proud of him for it because it's SO HARD.