"That sounds very sensible. A part of me wants to rework magic from scratch, but that would probably take a long time."

"Caveman wall paintings are only a worse starting point for calculus than nothing at all if you waste too much time trying to use them."

She giggles. "We'd still need to find sorcerers."

"And there's no 'The Search'. If we go public would they find us?"

"They might find us to try to snuff us. There must be some reason why they're not public. Something like Chesterton's Fence."

"I don't know that idiom."

"It's the idea that you shouldn't make a reform if you don't understand why the current way things are is what it is. In our case it's more, like, we maybe shouldn't go public with magic until we know why no one else has."

"Compromise by assigning a certain weight to not knowing why nobody else went public and once the benefits look like they'll outweigh the nebulous uncertain drawback bring it up again?"

"Yeah, pretty much. We should probably be, um, more powerful in general, before. And very covertly look for other sorcerers if we can."

"Premature planning, eh. Catch more cards and come what may. Doesn't quite sit well but that's what's gonna happen."

"Eeehhh. Kinda still wanna try to figure some magic out on our on, there must be some clue from the cards themselves, they were made by sorcery, right...?"

"Yes, made in a grand ritual at the height of Clow's power that Kero doesn't know all that much about. I'm hoping meditating in the right directions will give me clues eventually."

"Right, I get that, what I mean is, maybe there's some knowledge we could get from them about how sorcery works. Like the drawing behind cards, stuff written on them, the book, stuff they maybe know that Kero doesn't..."

"Good idea. We can try it after coding out your program? Since we already said that's on the agenda."

"I thought you were tired of doing magical tests for today?"

"New perspectives are interesting, though."

She giggles. "You're adorable, and I'm gonna kiss you again." And she proceeds to do just that!

Delicious kisses. "You're pretty great too you know. Let's not get, ahem, too distracted, though."

"Mmhmmm, someday I'm gonna manage to seduce you into too much distraction."

"Oh I'm not necessarily opposed but we have intellectually interesting things to do first, is all."

"Fair enough, intellectually interesting things are fun. I'm really happy I met you, you know?"

"...Thanks. Yeah. Life is better when spent with the right people. I am also really happy I met you. This week has been a hell of a ride and it's not over and it's the most fun I've had in years with 95% confidence."

She grins, and finishes her ice cream. "Here's to hoping it's just the start."

He nods, scrambles to eat the last few bites, and follows her out, grinning like a loon.

Handholding?