She remembered it had been an herb shop.
A tiny hole-in-the-wall hidden away in one of those endless disorienting narrow side streets that old Portland had been known for. Everything had been gray—the worn gum clotted concrete below her small shoes, the graffitied cinder block walls beneath her little pink sparkle painted fingertips, the soiled heavy rain clouds over her soft child's black curls. The air had smelled bad, bitter with the city's traffic exhaust and too hotly thick with cheap burning patchouli that tried half-heartedly to disguise the more pungent smoke of marijuana. There had been only two other people on the broken and cracked sidewalks besides them. One had been a raging drunk, weeping and cursing in a trash rotting space between two window broken stores that had faded For Sale signs hanging on their paint peeling doors. The other had been a man with ugly eyes who looked their formal dress clothes over with a mugger's assessing stare—but who paled and slunk hurriedly away when the tall dark haired man in cloaking black beside her turned and looked at him.
She had been afraid then of more than this lost street. Afraid of what had almost happened. To the would be mugger.
She had slid her little hand into her father's white gloved hand and held on tightly, trembling.
And he had looked down at her sadly. "Zatanna, you do not understand magic."
There had been an old patina stained bell that had announced their presence and she remember the way the defensive Ward flared white as they stepped across the chipped threshold, responding to their otherness. And granting them access as it recognized Magi.
Reality had rippled then, the carefully crafted illusion of grinding failing urbanity rolled back as if it were one of her father's stage curtains.
And she had given a small gasp in utter child's delight.
It had brought a small smile to her father's mouth and his shadowed eyes had lightened.
The herb shop stretched labyrinthine into infinity, worn warmly now with antiquity rather than decay. Orbs of Sight bracketed the walls in iron braziers, their unquenchable burning flames throwing golden light that floated rather than shone. Vaulting enchanted walls whispered to her, their soothing plaster flaring here and there with symbols humanity had long consciously forgotten but remembered somewhere in their hearts. They were lined with endless carved aged dark cabinets, filled to impossibility with fantastic hand blown glass jars of every whimsical shape and size. Some were sealed simply with rugged cut corks from trees long dust. Some with magical micro ward sealing waxes with the ring Crest stamps similar to her father's. And some with deceptively plain modern metal screw on lids that shifted places when you weren't looking. All had finger darkened parchment labels with intricate India black ink scripts detailing their contents with careful graceful hand drawn strokes in every language that had ever existed. Or ever would. On any world. The air swirled with the heady scents of herbs—heavy somber myrrh, mouth teasing turmeric, fragrant sweet lavender, woodsy clean black walnut, and more. Pleasing and bitter, familiar and exotic, ordinary and magically created, it all danced along a windless current filling her nose and playing along her skin. A sudden love for this eternal place filled her to near bursting with the wonder of it all as her innate Magi power leapt up within her in response to a Place of Power and she remembered that the little girl she had been had laughed in perfect innocent joy.
And the Power that lived in this shop, that was this shop, could not hold itself back from that single moment of absolute Pure Magic.
Reality had exploded in colors that had no name as All That Was, for just that one moment in Eternity and Time, had Looked upon that little black curled child.
And Sealed her to Them.
And for the first time, she wasn't afraid of what magic could do. Because she understood at last what magic was.
She remembered her father sweeping her up into his arms, weeping and laughing with his own joy now, and they danced among it seemed the very stars.
Her Magi magic had changed that day in the herb shop. It had taken her years before she began to grasp what had truly happened, to realize that she had become More. To realize that her magic was no more Bound. That she could do anything if she only believed she could. But by then the adult she had become had known too many years of unrelenting grief. Of horrors and shame and regrets. Of lost hopes and bitter aloneness. Of battles and cruel illusions and dark ruin. And rage.
It had terrified her when she realized it.
It had terrified Batman and the Justice League even more.
And for a long time she had given in to the fear, hers and theirs, deliberately allowing doubt to weaken her. She chose the soiled gray Portland street to the golden beauty of the herb shop. To make her less. To make her safer. Because she was afraid of what she could do. Because she was afraid of what she might do. And she had lived that way for so long that somehow, somewhere along the way, she slowly forgot that day with her father so long ago.
Until tonight.
When she had wept herself to sleep again in the exhausted loneliness of her hotel bed and They Looked again on Their black curled child and she had suddenly dreamed again of the innocent joy that was Pure Magic.
And woke weeping now for an entirely different reason in the soft pink dawn.
Zatanna, you do not understand magic.
She quietly cancelled her evening performance and booked a flight to Portland.
It was time she relearned.