Elayra snorted at his comment of, ‘not bad,’ her gaze darkening at his smirk. “Shut up and just do it. You’re wasting time,” she snapped. 
	She watched Ghent try to mimic her position, then quickly summoned a shield in front of her, just in case. It curved slightly over her head and sides, ready to deflect any flying debris in case he really [i]did[/i] blow the store to oblivion. At his comment about her nickname for him, it became her turn to smirk.
	“Would you rather ‘Stumblebum,’ Featherhead? Or maybe ‘[i]Dunder[/i]head?’” She crossed her arms. “Because all of those would suit you rather well.”
	She rolled her eyes at his reaction to saying the focus word. She listened to him when he said it aloud, giving a slight, satisfied nod when he said it correctly. When he began to search for the world’s magic, Elayra grew tense, her gaze shifting between him, the store, and the roads. She scanned the shops, making sure no one was watching, or showed any sign of having seen her use of magic.
	Time seemed to drag on. Though no more than a minute could have passed, Elayra started tapping her foot impatiently, the sound of her boot clicking against the concrete drowned out by the downpour.
	[b]“Nothing’s there.”[/b]
	She scowled, and released her hold on the shield, making it disappear in a glittering burst. “It’s there. You’re just not looking right. You need to do this little thing called ‘concentrate.’ Maybe you've heard of it?”
	She eyed him suspiciously when he stepped toward her, and took an instinctive step back before he gripped her shoulders. She reached up with both arms to push him off, but he spun her around. She blinked at the empty sidewalk now in front of her, wondering if there was something she was supposed to be seeing, some sort of hidden threat, her confusion the only thing protecting Ghent from her.
	[b]"Sorry. I think you're making me nervous.”[/b]
	Her eyes narrowed and brows rose as she turned partially back around, realizing what he was doing, his back already to her.
	“You’ve [i]got[/i] to be joking,” she growled as he returned to his place at the opposite side of the awning.
	She ran a hand down her face as Ghent grew still. For their sake, she tried to keep from looking at him, but she could not stand having [i]him[/i] at her back about to try his hand at magic, especially after the last time. Without a sound, she turned mostly back around, her back hunched slightly, ever at the ready to act should he prove successfully unsuccessful.
	This time, she did not have as long to wait.
	The full word had barely left his lips before a powerful burst of air and energy erupted an inch from his palm. It carried enough of a backwards rush to make Elayra’s waterlogged hair billow wildly around her face even from her distance. Though Ghent could sense the slight dwindle of the magic over the span between him and the shop, like an unfamiliar sixth sense, the burst hit its target. It shattered the storefront window into hundreds of thick shards, sending them flying through the air from the force of the rotating gale like tiny, knife-like missiles.
	Predicting the end result a millisecond before it happened, Elayra leapt across the space between her and Ghent as she summoned another shield. She tackled him to the hard, wet ground, directing the shield to cover both of them in a protective dome. Before the two hit the ground, she sensed and heard a few of the shards collide with her shield.
	She laid there for a short second to make sure the threat had passed, hoping she had made it to Ghent in time to keep him from getting skewered.
	She quickly propping herself up, her forearm on Ghent’s side. Once more, she dropped the shield, and the torrent of rain she had thrown them into poured over them as she looked him over, hard worry in her gaze.
	“You alive?”