Zatara nods.

"Yeah, that sure sounds like the aftermath of touching a big magical thing. My professional recommendation would normally be to go curl up in a blanket nest with a tub of ice cream and spend a while dreaming and relaxing. It will help you process everything and recenter yourself. But it sounds like you feel too unsettled for that?"

"...kinda?" 

She stims a bit. 

"Mostly I just - feel like I haven't completed this, 'til I've gotten a look over at this and gotten a bit of a pat on the head and reassurance that it looks like I've done this properly and that I've been doing good and I've had the chance to ask some questions that my brain reflexively wants to blurt out but also feels a bit too shy to just like, say? I could go and do that and I think it would work out some but it feels like it would also make me stew a bit...?" 

"Well, I was going to ask to examine your lantern, as a matter of professional curiosity. We could do that now, if you like. May I ...?"

"Of course!" 

She hands it over to him, cradling it gingerly in her hands. 

He turns it over in his hands, peering at it. The light of hope beats within it, a drum that can never be silenced.

"Neat bindings," he notes. "It looks very stable. .nacs larutcurtS — oh! That's interesting. It's actually got an ongoing connection to wherever it is that you summoned the hope elemental from. I bet it would form a powerful focus for subsequent summonings, should you have further need. But that connection is hooked into ... and then this bit ..."

He mumbles inaudibly for a moment, running his fingers up and down the surface of the device.

"As far as I can tell it should work just fine to recharge hope-powered items. But that clearly isn't all that it does. What else did you build into it?"

"A few things? If I did everything right, it should be able to make a lil subspace pocket it for itself that I can use to just make it more isolated from the rest of the environment or follow along with a 'key'. The design should also be able to adjust things some to modify the amount of hope that it lets out of the central chamber, too, so it doesn't just passively radiate it out all the time - there's more uses for that too, but that'll require a bit more design work to make happen with any precision - and there should be a bit of storage to help with the capacity... This bit is a bit more speculative but I'm trying to set this up to be a sort of emotional energy source that's designed to wire things up into other colors - you've seen the blue-green stuff before in the talismans, and I made this" 

she gestures a bit eepily over at the violet cube. "for the violet light of love, which seems to be serving pretty well?" 

"I think in principle it should be possible to run a whole color wheel of stuff off of it. I've got the 'spots' so to speak to interface with a blue / other color connector for charging other devices set up, though I'm going to need more shifting of my powers for me to make everything to fit. I'm a pretty solid fit for violet, green and blue as best I can tell, but doing things with other colors is going to be trickier, I think, even with the gift? I'm not one who naturally thinks much in terms of fear or hate, and I think in terms of love and hope before compassion, usually, and wants have always been a little bit finnicky for me to pin down. But yeah. I got a power for synergistic design between blue and the rest of the colors for this and... feels like the colors kind of like each other, for all that some of them naturally end up rivalrous? Been hoping to poke at that..." 

"Hmm."

He raises a hand and casts an illusion in the space between them.

"I have seen them arranged like this. After all ... 'Isn't love just a little like hate? When it smiles at the window, and roars like a lion at the gate.' On the other hand, I've also seen them laid out like this:"

"... I've been doing some reading up on the topic, but there isn't a great deal of consensus between wizards at the best of times. If you do discover a deeper connection between the colors I would be most interested in hearing about it."

"Oh - before we get too much into anything, should I be good to drop my magical power source power? Not sure if it'd be the sort of thing that interacts with my recovery, here."  

She nods tentatively. 

"I have no idea!" he replies with a certain amount of delight. "I've never actually come across anyone who has inherent magic that they can turn on and off like that! But the fatigue is more emotional than magical, I think, so I don't have any reason to believe dropping it would be harmful."

A small nod, and poke to the gift to get rid of the magical reserve power (and the spellfixing intuition ones, while she's at it.) 

The gift lets the sparks separate and drift away. Other than losing the feeling of having a little reservoir of magic to fix things with, nothing happens.

"Looks like it's okay? Anyways... Don't think it's too good for me right now to think too much about the colors right now, so..." 

She slumps a little down on her knees, and rocks her hands a little. If she had to guess, the problem is that the her capacity for hope was sort of - overstretched, and then sank back down to her more normal (but still enhanced) levels, and so she feels simultaneously overhopeful and underhopeful. Wordsing that right now seems too hard, though. 

"- you wanted to talk about possible people to hand my magic education off to today, right?" 

She kind of still wants to ask more about the lantern, even though his analysis toolset for that seems kind of incomplete, if he was so suprised by the planar connection and needed to be guided through the features. He's probably mostly just looking at... a reflection of it, in the water and the waves of the world's magic, and probably he can learn more about it in time, but... Probably his bloodline power doesn't natively cover this too too well? She could ask him about the magic of Atlantis or superheroes, and probably all of that would be eventually useful - she has a couple of awkwardly pointed questions already stewing in her mind about wonder woman. She could offer to help, or to repay him for what he's already offered, but she's tired. She was going to spend most of the rest of the day on administrivia, and right now she really doesn't want to have to leave the mountain, and that probably won't fade 'til tommorow, even if she's already feeling a little better just getting to curl up and feel that the lantern is working and that she's done it, for all that it was a good bit harder then she'd hoped it'd be. But that... that's probably the big thing that she needs to figure out, and is even conveniently a nice way to potentially lean into another possibly indecorous question that's crossed her mind. 

Zatara sinks down to sit against the wall across from her, and manages to make the motion look natural.

"Yes, I did want to talk through that with you at some point. Although I would suggest not making any permanent decisions until tomorrow. The main thing I wanted to ask was — you've tried spellfixing, you've tried thaumaturgy, and you've tried summoning. Those were the areas of magic that you had expressed interest in. How do you feel that they've been working for you? I'm a decent thaumaturgy instructor, but I'm also more of a generalist, and I tend to lean a bit too much on my family's special talent."

".rekam ruoy ot nruteR" He floats the lantern back over to her.

"But if you want to study with an actual expert spellfixer — one who will know little tricks that I and my library do not — I managed to track down the name of a wizard in Africa who is supposed to be a master of the art. And if you wanted to go further down the path of learning to negotiate with otherworldly powers, I can put you in touch with a priest of my acquaintance who is experienced in such things. Or if you've decided to try something else, or if you haven't had long enough to decide, that's fine too. I just want to make sure that you have the chance to find a teacher suited to what you actually want to learn, and not just to backward-spoken stageroom showery."

He pulls his hand off the end of his arm, waves it at her, and then puts it back. A keen eye would spot that he's actually just pulled his hand back into his sleeve and detached his glove to use as a puppet for a moment.

She settles the lantern into place beside her, then glances down at the pages of magical contacts, and starts fussing about a bit at cleaning up the ritual set-up. 

"I think... I'm probably always going to be a generalist? Having the insight of a thaumaturgist into how things work is an exciting prospect for me, and it's been fun playing around with that? Plus, it seems like it's a good foundation for other things. Spellfixing is convenient, because it lets me flick around between specializations and keep things on hand that I wouldn't be able to do otherwise, and lets me rush things a little and make arrnagements to fit things that might not otherwise be feasible. In the long term, I might focus more on it, but honestly I mostly just want to have enough understanding of what it can and can't do that i can use it to bridge between projects a little? And spirits... I like being able to reach out and help with these things, and there's a lot that simply isn't practical without them, as best I can tell? I look at this world and one of the biggest things I see is that people aren't taking advantage of the existence of powerful patrons that are just... waiting there, ready for people to ask politely and give offerings that don't really amount to a real cost in the end, certainly compared to doing it yourself? I'm not sure I'm too cut out for the minionmancy approach to it, but it's something I'd want to explore." 

She takes off her blue ring, and tosses it up in the air, staring up in thought. 

"I think if I had to pick, the biggest priority for me right now is being comfortable with working with some of the bigger spirits, whether that looks like spirit calling or not, followed by having a foundation in thaumaturgy and general practice, and distantly followed by spellfixing? There's nothing wrong with it, and maybe I might change my mind about it once I figure out my buisness relationship with atlantis and some spirits, but it doesn't - call to me as a good path for me nearly as much as the other two do." 

"Honestly though..." 

She taps her lips. How to put this without sounding too creepy and/or gay. She does look wonderful in that uniform of hers and she has that lovely smile, even if the reason the thought occured to her was purely practical. 

"Part of this is just that I want to - get to play around with things and develop in all sorts of different directions as the problems before me shift and change and my toolkit shifts and change? Your bloodline is pretty good for that, but as best I can tell it doesn't very natively... get my empathic work, though I'd bet that's developable enough. You're the league's archmage and generalist wizard-on-call, as best I understand it? There's a few other people with individual specialties, and from what little I've heard about him Shazam's patron seems pretty broadly knowledgeable about these sorts of things, but he's a bit of a recluse and an exception. So you're probably more or less out of the question. But..." 

She might as well just get it out, really, especially when she's talking to a magician who's in the same room as a totally unshielded artifact embodying her capacity for love. 

"Your daughter. I've seen her in your shows, and I'd be surprised if she wasn't inheriting your traditions and your bloodline and probably your drive towards superheroism too. She looks like a bright and lovely girl, and I was wondering if I could work with her, on some of this? There's going to be a lot of situations where I'm going to go off the beaten path and having someone who can find out what's going on and maybe integrate that into their own work would be something useful? I'm sure it'd be easier on you to take advantage of my abilities in research and everything with someone who's working from the same starting place then someone you found in timbuktu or say, some altantean military archmage that probably would have to wrap up everything in a billion NDAs or rolls of red tape. I could probably emulate your bloodline power with the gift too, for whatever that's worth. Obviously, it's her choice what she wants to do with her life and if and how much she wants to work with me. Given she's not on the team already, that means something about what she's comfortable doing right now but..." 

She shakes her head, and sighs lightly. 

"I wanted to mention the possibility, at least." 

She blushes lightly, and ducks her head. 

"Oh and - I don't want to say this - ungratefully? I'm sure you've done a ton of work digging up all these candidates and guiding me and looking over me as I do all sorts of semi-ill advised things. I hope I can do something to repay you for all that, sometime, but I just... want everything on the table, you know? Doesn't help to push things back for later, usually." 

She crawls forward and goes and grabs the remnants of the circle, pulling them up into the nice lil segmented pieces in a stack - she'll poke the computer for a storage space for this later, or just throw it in her closet or something. The whole ritual was honestly good fun, and she's pretty sure that a lot of it was that the work was so - foundational that the hopes were kind of overly abstract, and just her being a little inexperienced? But once she sets up a dialogue and starts working on more concrete things she'll bet it'll start getting a lot easier. 

"Ah, I see."

Zatara leans his head back against the wall in thought.

"You're right that I'm the league's archmage and generally on-call for magic stuff. That's part of the problem, really — you deserve someone's full attention, and I've never really had the time to even give Zatanna as firm a grounding as I really should have. And maybe that would be less of a problem if you could study together, certainly, it's ..."

He closes his eyes in memory.

"Sindella. My late wife."

He smiles fondly.

"She was a superhero too, you know. My equal, my rival, the love of my life ... Together we formed an unstoppable bulwark against arcane threats. And then ... we were stopped. There was a fight against a group of black magicians, and Sindella bought us time to ..."

"Well, anyway. I know she still watches over Zatanna and myself from her place in Heaven — but I've been terribly reluctant to let Zatanna get involved in this lifestyle. The things I've seen in this job ... I know one day she will be a powerful and brilliant wizard. She takes to magic like a duck takes to water, honestly. But she's still my little girl, and—"

He opens his eyes and tilts his head off of the wall to stare at his hands.

"I told her that I would let her get involved in all this when she could manage a particular protective spell. And ... she's close. She's so close, and I can't bear to break her heart by putting up more barriers, and I can't bear to let her out into the world that took her mother. She's so much like her — just as brilliant, just as passionate and just-hearted. And I know she'll go out to fight one of these days, I just hope—"

A spark of blue light falls from his lips and into his hands, collecting in his palm like molten sapphire.

He's quiet for a long moment.

"Yes. Yes, I do hope. Let me just— Hold on for a moment, please."

He pulls out a flip-phone and hits the speed dial.

"Zatanna? Hi, sweetheart. I just wanted to ask how you're doing with the spell. There's another young wizard here who's been wondering if I can arrange joint tutoring, and—"

"Oh my gosh! Yeah, I've totally got it! Hold on!"

"!esiugsid ylppA"

"See? I held it for, like, four hours this morning while you were in the Library."

Zatara lets out a deep breath.

"O—"

He coughs.

"Okay. Let's talk about this over dinner tonight. Actually—"

He covers the phone's receiver with one hand.

"Topaz, do you have any dinner plans today?"

She listens empathetically to his story, nodding along and smiling as he nears the end. 

She shakes her head.

"Nope! Schedule's clear the whole day - I think batman wants us to have a bit of a chance to settle in without having to worry about too much, for the moment, especially after our shake down mission." 

She should maybe get in one of Joan's workouts in, but honestly doing an excercise to test her will to the limits doesn't seem like... the wisest thing? 

And wow the ritual had more spillover then she expected, if he's able to do it that readily. She'll have to see about setting up something like this with Joan to help her out...

Zatara nods.

"That makes sense. Would you like to come over to Shadowcrest for dinner, and meet Zatanna? Around 6:00?"

"I would love to!" 

She ducks and blushes for a moment, then glances over. 

"But for now... Probably I should just leave you with some time for the rest of your duties and give myself the ice cream the good doctor" she gestures sweepingly. "prescribed? There's always more to talk about, but I think we're both emotionally tired out enough that it's best to wait a bit on too much more work." 

"Yes, that sounds like a plan," he agrees. "From experience, I suspect the dinner discussion will turn to magic anyway, for your other questions."

He puts the phone back to his ear.

"We're going to have a guest for dinner — I should be back at around the normal time, and I'll want to double-check your spell. You'll have to hold it through dinner— Yes, actually. No, the doorway should have— Yes, alright, sweetheart. See you this evening."

He folds the phone back up and drops it in his pocket.

"Alright! Congratulations again on a successful summoning, Topaz. I'll see you for dinner this evening — and probably quite a bit more than that, going forward, if you really want to learn from an overworked generalist like myself."

She smiles lightly, and bows her head lightly. 

"I would be honored." 

She blushes bashfully, and waves him off as she runs to nab herself a nice bowl of vanilla ice cream.