"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.

He doesn't really get any success at it for the first several minutes.

He's patient, but not as much when he doesn't even know if he's accomplishing anything. Also, he's increasingly tired.

"Ugh. I might call this experiment for now and go to bed."

"Probably a good idea! I'll still be here in the morning, or... however long, really."

So off to bed hammock Tintin goes. He's only modestly discouraged by his lack of success at magic; mostly he's just feeling the slightly manic energy of the evening catching up with him.

"I'm sure you'll get it tomorrow, you got the dance thing pretty quickly," says Taharqi, who's finished with their sleeping arrangements. Horan is already lying on his furs, but he's still awake, staring at the ceiling and looking deep in thought.

"I certainly hope so! It would be very nice to be able to do even more inexplicable things."

"Says the most inexplicable thing of the year."

"Exactly!"

Time for sleep?

Time for sleep!

Tintin has already had reason to know that Taharqi is particularly fast at both falling asleep and waking up, but there's something different about the way he relaxes here that was not present while they were walking all the way back. He feels like...

...like he's home.