"Crystals."

Tintin - cackles.

"I can make crystals. What kind? Fist-sized diamond? Ruby as long as my forearm? Sphere of rose quartz as big as my head?"

"—well, yes, all of those," says the staff, and he starts to cackle, too. "Truly? Oh, the marvels you could accomplish—"

"They're so easy to make! Well - if you have molecular forges, that is. Taharqi, I'll need coal and sand and, and probably some bauxite if you can distinguish it - I'm getting distracted, making it is the easy part. Would I be able to make some kind of, of practice crystal, something weak so that if I mess up it won't do much, or should I start with something powerful to make up for my lack of direct tutelage?"

"First thing, definitely the first thing, you don't want to get annoyed by a dust speck in your eye and blow up the house, funny as that would be."

"Excellent, that was my impulse - quartz, diamond, corundum? Diamond would be easiest, probably, but none of them would be terribly difficult."

"For your first one? Salt. You'll want salt."

"I love it! Um. Taharqi may I please have some salt."

Taharqi laughs and shakes his head. "Can you turn salt powder into a solid salt crystal?" Then he pauses and turns to the staff itself. "Actually, is that necessary?"

    "Yes, yes, a solid crystal of, oh, I wish I still had my hands, a third the size of a chicken egg?" suggests the staff.

"Yes, I can do that."

"Then I shall return anon," says Taharqi, still grinning and walking off back downstairs.

"You won't be able to do much, mind you, and the crystal will get used up quickly, but—good for practice!"

"Excellent. So - I have a very loose grasp of the mind-state needed for dancing magic. Is that similar to the mind-state needed for proper sorcery?"

"Nnnhhhhhh yes and no. They're different, all of them, and what you'll need to do is, is project them out in the world, eh? But it's good! Good, that you, you got the dance magic thing going on. Means it'll be easier to spin from there. I think."

"Good to know! ...I do hope I'm able to learn, it would be such nonsense if it turned out I had to be born on this planet or something."

"—you weren't born on this planet?"

"No, not even slightly - I'm almost certainly from another universe, and even if I somehow ended up in my own world's distant past I was born half the galaxy away from Earth on a colony planet."

"Huh! Interesting! Well, I, I wouldn't know, I've never met anyone like that before. But you can always try!"

And here's Taharqi with a cured leather bag filled with salt.

From which Tintin decants two crystals, each about a third of the size of a chicken's egg. He hands one to Taharqi.

Taharqi accepts it and looks at the staff, bemused.

    "Excellent! Now comes the other part that is very very hard for a staff to teach. The effect you're going for is moving something. Wind, usually easier, see, because it's air. A li'l breeze."

"Alright."

Tintin tries to clear his mind, get into a less motile version of the meditative state he was in while dancing earlier. 

Predictably, nothing happens.

...hmm. Maybe it's not about the motility, so much as the inwardness. He tries - focusing-without-focusing on the air around him. 

Predictably, nothing happens.

Or maybe something does? Maybe it feels like something. Or maybe he's imagining it.

Trying to focus-without-focusing harder would absolutely defeat the purpose. Instead, he merely continues, trying to pursue the mind-state he occupied in the moment of possible success.