"Yeah. Whereas with the supervolcano I couldn't exactly say 'have you considered that destroying a continent because some people have been littering in a peripheral bit of you is extremely disproportionate'."

"And, of course, half the reason I didn't even consider becoming a teacher like my sister was out of a desire to avoid even the human version."

"Hm?"

"Oh, my parents run a boarding school. My sister's known pretty much all her life she wanted to teach there someday, but I've never been interested. If I had been at all interested I might have gone with it, it's intellectual, and like I said I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life."

"My mom's a teacher. She does very introductory airbending lessons for little tiny airbenders."

"That's sweet."

"And she's good at it, I had fun when I was a tiny airbender myself."

"My sister's really good at what she does too. She has a bit of a temper, but it really only applies to adults--I have seen her draw upon endless wells of patience when it comes to children."

"I probably wouldn't be very good at teaching as a career, but I've helped a little as part of going through the curriculum - teaching cements things for the teacher, so they have older kids work with the younger ones. And that wasn't bad."

"Yeah, I helped with some tutoring when I was in school, but I wouldn't want to make a career of it."

"I'm not really a patient person, but I do like studying bending and my mom explained why I was doing the tutoring thing so I didn't mind."

"I can be patient when I have to, I just prefer not to have to."

Nod nod.

"Of course, a lot of medicine requires patience, but surgery is a sort of...charged patience? It takes a long time, sometimes, but you're doing things."

"Yeah, I wouldn't consider that the same thing at all. You're always making progress."

"With teaching you're making progress too, it's just slower. And mostly the other person doing things."

"Mm - I mean that's technically true but there are a lot of plateaus in which nothing is happening except the passage of time."

"True."

"And I should probably head back to work soon, before I forget what I was doing before I came in." Emily takes her pill and gulps down the water. "Thanks, Bar, what do I owe you?"

$3. A pleasure as always.

She takes out a few bills. "Likewise. I'll see you later, I'm sure." And she leaves.