[ the shift from the physicality of bending to the much more academically rigorous school of summoning is pretty hard as it is. what makes it worse, is mako barely knew how to read the papers back home, let alone some weird academic text on spirits, and here, that's all he does! cooped up inside the mages guild library, with the... assistants.

the corpse-y assistants. who are gross. and dead and nasty and smell, has anyone else noticed the smell?

that is why mako is furtively (but also trying not to look suspcious) slipping the two books he's trying to study into a messenger bag and making his way for the exit.

bitch is gonna go study in a park or something. you know, where it's sunny and doesn't smell like dead things? maybe you'll see him there, legs folded with the open book in his lap, following the lines of text with his finger, and looking only slightly confused.

(this passage is giving him trouble, okay. he's read it three times, or tried to.) ]