WHO:Joan Watson & Zatanna Zatara WHEN: Early May WHERE: Joan's Agency office WHAT: Zee shares some news, and Joan starts to learn tasseomancy. WARNINGS: Nil STATUS: Complete
Rooibos tea was one of Zatanna’s favorites - it allowed for many health benefits (easing high blood pressure, good for bone strength, and also helping with digestive difficulties of which had been a particular nuisance for her lately along with a leaky bladder how did this happen), and the best part? It was caffeine-free. She could drink a cup of it without feeling like she was walking on eggshells - science hadn’t exactly proven that caffeine intake could be harmful during pregnancy, but it wasn’t exactly a disproven theory either. And she had been doing everything she could, ever since she found out she was expecting, to stay safe and healthy during that crucial first trimester.
Those twelve weeks were up, however, and she was ready to tell her friends and circus family (when she could get ahold of, say, the elusive acrobats) that she was pregnant. Her due date was projected to be early November, so she had time to settle her affairs before going on maternity leave - but it never seemed too early to start, in her opinion.
Which was why she carried two cups of hot, soothing rooibos to Joan’s office on a weekday - Zatanna would train her, hopefully, to begin doing some of the things the Mistress of Magic herself did, so a viable skillset would be available at the Agency while the Occult Division was one woman down. Tasseomancy was a good place to start, and after they drank the tea the symbols beautifully inscribed on the ceramic (this particular occult tool had been given to her by Lina, a housewarming present found at Romany Wisdom’s shop) would be visible - they’d also see where the granules landed, and what was ahead.
“Knock, knock,” she announced, when she got to Joan’s door. “My hands are full, otherwise I’d really knock.”
The small space that Joan was occupying in the appropriate division of the Agency was a little cluttered with books, scrolls and her laptop, sitting with the blue screen of information glaring brightly at her from the corner. It was smaller than her PI office, but it was suitable for easy access to the impressive array of information that she was allowed to go through.
“Oh hey, let me help.” Her door was eternally open, just so that she didn’t inhale musty book all day, but she still brightened upon Zatanna’s arrival. “Just let me shift these,” a few of the books she was mostly reading for interest, because Joan definitely found the contradicting histories of the same events through different ideologies to be interesting.
Space made at the table slash desk for them to sit comfortably without worrying about damaging something important. “I’ve actually been doing a little reading into things.” Which was what the glare from her laptop screen was.
“Oh, good. I’ll have more where that came from - more books for you, that is,” Zatanna grinned, stepping into the office and setting down the cups of tea. She only had one example of reading material with her now, a pamphlet with the symbols they would be going over very soon here. But it was compact and Joan could keep it with her, for the purposes of studying.
She settled at the makeshift table (the desk, in all actuality? Zee liked the cozy feel to Joan’s office), crossing her legs and picking up her tea to sip from the cup. The warmth flowed through her, and calmed her as it always did. “I actually have to tell you something though? Related to why I’m going to be going through this training.” Besides that being able to potentially sense or predict Orange County disasters would come in very handy for all involved - and having people to work on that was, really, quite helpful.
If there was one thing that Joan was, it was studious. She always had been, her thirst for knowledge was only really rivaled by her want to help people, which was why medical school had been such a good fit and why her parents despaired when she’d left medicine.
Joan was happy to help, and she’d seen the potential tutelage as a way to do that, not to mention it would likely be a step to keep her out of other people’s hairs while she was learning. “Oh? I assumed that I’d bothered someone enough that they’d nudged you to find something productive for me?”
Not that she was complaining. “Not that I’m not all for this, I’m actually a little giddy at the prospect.” More than a little, but still. Tasseomancy was something she could learn, something that didn’t require her to have some innate skill or connection to magic. She just had to learn, and she could be a very attentive student.
Zee knew that Joan was well-liked around here - and oh, Natasha wouldn’t have gone along with the woman’s onboarding if she didn’t think Dr. Watson would be a good fit. But she was, she was intelligent and a hard worker and a prime example of how diversity could be a good thing, as in, bringing new ideas to the table. You didn’t have to practice magic to study the craft - the keys and secrets to magic lay in books, and knowledge really was power in this case.
So the quip about being productive made the Princess of Prestidigitation chuckle. “Well, soon it’s just going to be two of you in the Division so you’ll be very busy, I imagine,” she said, placing her cup of tea on the table. The next words were always strange to say, like she was still trying to wrap her mind around everything. Zatanna knew that John certainly was (though he’d come a long way, admittedly. The amusement over gleefully presenting her with a burger thanks to her odd cravings helped at tickling his pickle about this whole thing).
“I’m pregnant. Due in early November.”
Joan wasn’t actually expecting something like that, not in the least, “Oh my god, that’s fantastic. Congratulations.” The enthusiasm was genuine and heartfelt, Joan didn’t need to know Zee overly long to know that she deserved good things. Happy things.
“I’m so happy for you, I mean, it does give me a definite time frame to learn this by, but for good reasons.” All the more reason to throw herself into things, make sure Zatanna didn’t have anything on this end to worry about when she came due and took her time off. Nothing to distract from impending motherhood.
“I can see why it’d be a good idea to have someone understand the mechanics of it, let you get some rest and leave.” The pleased grin was probably ridiculous, but Joan didn’t really care.
Her reaction was very sweet, and Zatanna couldn’t help but smile too. “Thank you, and I’m sorry I didn’t mention anything sooner - but we wanted to wait until twelve weeks passed, before telling most people,” she said. Zee told Lina and Meg at first (they were family), and she knew John told a friend of his too - he probably needed to talk to someone about it, and so she couldn’t blame him for that. In fact, she encouraged him to not hold everything in all the time.
But now she felt much better about telling the whole world, and she was happy about everything. Even if she hadn’t exactly gotten to the ‘I’m glowing’ part of pregnancy yet. It was more like ‘I’m puking, and hormonal.’
“Anyway, once we start seeing the tea remnants in the cups, I’ll go over the basics with you right now.” They’d just have to drink first but nothing hit the spot during a busy work day quite like a good cup of tea.
The twelve week mark was exceptionally important, and Joan understood perfectly about waiting for that moment before relaxing enough to spread the joy. It was the turning point from elated but hesitant, to full on elated. “I completely understand, I’m so happy for you.” Zee seemed to be a very together woman, wise and careful, but considerate and compassionate with it.
Joan could see her being an excellent mother.
Sipping the rooibos, Joan relaxed back for a moment, it was fairly soothing, a nice warm drink before the actual lesson and all that. “How long have you been reading?” Obviously, she meant the tasseomancy, not general reading, but Joan was always curious about the actual practitioners in the group.
“Since I was about seventeen or so,” Zatanna replied, thinking back to those circus times - the backdrop changed daily, going from mountains to the ocean to the desert to cities to rural landscapes very quickly, and she’d had a variety of playmates from all different walks of life as they traveled from place to place. “My uncle - well, he was really my father’s best friend, but I call him my uncle - he taught me. All about tasseomancy and tarot, mostly.” They were still the mediums she was most comfortable with, when it came to divination. It was just that after she’d come into her magic, her talent at identifying possibilities for the future increased quite a bit.
She sipped her tea, continuing. A little history lesson to begin with, before she dove in fully. “The earliest mentions of tasseomancy are from the 1600s, when the Roma brought leaf reading to Europe from the Far East. It’s possible the practice began in China, focused around geomancy, which puts meaning to symbols.”
The fact that Zee had learned from family, however that family came about, wasn’t overly surprising to Joan. It seemed like the sort of trade that one needed to be passed on in that manner. She’d met a few psychics over the years, either through her work or her friends different lifestyles. It was a trait they all learned through some family member as far as she remembered.
“Was it always used as a prophecy or fortune telling tool?” The Roma were often attached to that aspect of culture, fortune telling, palm reading, tarot readings. And naturally, as it always happened, Western culture clamoured for the mysticism of it all.
“I believe so,” Zatanna nodded. “It evolved, of course - didn’t become popular until the actual introduction of tea from China - but definitely evolved from reading symbols in wax and such. In the 1800s, reading tea leaves was even something meant for daily use. Potters would make teacups just like this - “ She motioned to the ones they were drinking out of, “...with the symbols already there to make it easier to read right at home.”
So the set she had was very old, no doubt. It was beautiful though, a lovely gift. She would have to get Joan her own set - maybe a belated ‘welcome to the Agency’ workplace present.
Draining her cup, she set it down and pulled out the pamphlet with the printed symbols to begin the lesson. “Keep in mind that readings are not meant for the long-term. Tasseomancy is most useful for, say, up to a twelve-month period. You can’t look five years into the future. Though it’d be helpful for getting a glimpse into some disaster that may occur very soon,” she smiled wryly. They had a lot of those here.
“I like to compare it to looking at clouds and seeing shapes. The more relaxed you are as well, the more you will see. Those who are most successful at this are ones who trust their intuition, their imagination.”
Intuition Joan had plenty of, imagination was a little more complex, but she was figuring out how to listen to those little notions too. It made sense to not try to see relevance for too long in the future, things were fluid, changes happened all the time. Joan knew that better than most. Given the number of career changes she’d had.
But cloud shapes was probably an exceptionally good explanation for it, and as Joan peered into her own cup, the clusters of leaves did sort of resemble the shape of clouds -not really shapes, but similar. “Then having a calming cup of tea beforehand certainly make sense.” Help calm a restless mind.
“I find that it does help, yes,” Zee chuckled. “There is meaning to the shapes that the leaves create, but also to the white space in between - the whole cup, really.” She hadn’t entirely drained her cup, but left a little necessary liquid in the bottom - with that, she did some swirling to mix everything, any excess liquid was patted out, and now the reading could start.
Motioning to the handle, she explained, “This orients the whole reading. The handle at the bottom, the cup is divided into three sections - past, present, and future, moving in a clockwise direction from the handle. Then it’s a matter of interpreting the shapes.”
Which was exactly why she’d likened it to cloud-watching; this would be positive for Joan. Having a little spark of imagination certainly wasn’t a bad thing. “For instance, the dashes here - they mean travel, or a period of busyness. You can compare with the guide,” she moved the paper closer, “But soon you will learn to see them and automatically know what is there.”
The guide would undoubtedly help Joan to work out just how to interpret what she was seeing, learning what they meant in regards to those, that was the task she’d set herself for evenings. She was already listening intently to what Zee was saying, resolute in picking this up well. It helped having such a good teacher.
Working out how the cup was divided based on the handle, her handy little guide at the ready, Joan noted the dashes that Zee was highlighting, making sure she understood how to grasp the notion of using the imagination to work out what they were. “But lines mean extended travel, right?” She could infer that, her own cup seemed to have something like Zee’s dashes, but without breaks, more like lines, thin but extended.
“Extended travel, or change,” Zatanna concurred, leaning over a bit to examine the symbol. “And you see this one here - “ She pointed, sweeping with her index finger to accentuate the design she was looking at, “...without consulting the guide, tell me what you think you see. What you think it means.”
It was a knot, tightly wound - the meaning could be easy enough to infer. Stress, in the present, which was fitting enough for any of them. But if you were one to look and just see a dark blob, then something that spoke to anxiety and stress wouldn’t come to you at all. That was where the creativity came into play.
Joan tipped her cup a little, squinting at the cluster of tea and considering what it might look like. It likely wasn’t enough to look for things you saw in the guide, seeing things without automatically linking it to something else probably helped to give a more honest interpretation of things.
It almost looked like… Maybe petals, on the top of a flower, but not entirely, like cords all linking in and… “Like laced knots, tangled up.” Which would make sense, really, to infer that… “Maybe, anxiety? Or stress, being all knotted up over something.” Which likely happened to a lot of people in this day and age.
The guide was a helpful tool so you could confirm what, in fact, you were looking at - but picking out the shapes and recognizing them, that was all on the reader. Who would see what they would see. And Joan was doing very well so far - Zatanna had a feeling she’d be a quick study.
“Good,” she praised, with a smile. “The symbol does mean stress. Which is a good indicator of our current situation in the present, I’d say,” she laughed lightly. “Now, look to the future - what do you see?”
It wasn’t meant to be absolute, more...a path. A potential path, just one, but not the only answer.
It seemed like some things were rather literal, what they represented and what they looked like connecting somewhat to what people thought of when seeing those things. Which was likely handy when the intuition came into things, rather than serious focus to make something appear, figuring out what it was just by imagination.
“I think that’s a ‘v’, or a tick…” Although she wasn’t sure what that could have to do with anything. It looked like when kids drew little birds, flying in the distance. Joan had to turn to the little guide to see… “Oh, it’s the star sign…” Which was linked to fire, or strong emotion. That was something.
A tick. Zatanna chuckled good-naturedly. But Joan was correct, the star sign meant exactly that - she was getting her bearings, and Zee knew she’d be just fine at this (great, even!) with more practice.
“There, see - it’s not so bad, right?” she offered, hoping that her co-worker didn’t decide she hated the art of reading tea leaves and wanted nothing to do with this rubbish. “It’s actually kind of fun. And I feel confident you’ll get the hang of it more and more.”
It was sort of fun, Joan could agree there, looking for the shapes, interpreting what they were, getting the meanings from those symbols too. And Joan knew she’d be able to figure out what these symbols were meant to look like, she’d learn those quickly and build on that understanding -Joan always had been a quick study.
“It’ll just take some practice, but I’m sure I had the dedication to put in.” She always did when it came to important new skills, and it was a craft she could see herself enjoying in the long run.