Merry, Mara wanders deeper into the night by herself. The rain slows
and seems to hang in the air, warm and soft and damp and clean. She
spreads her arms and pretends to float, almost dancing. Occasional
people pass by on the street, blurry faceless groups, and she smiles
to them all. A car appears, a pair of lights outshining the
streetlamps, and she follows it for a little while, until it
disappears in the distance.
She finds a river, wide and quiet as the sky, and follows it until
the smeared sedate lights of the city grow dim. It looks like dark
clouds rolling in, covering the tops of the tallest buildings and
sinking lower. A low groan vibrates Mara's body, coming from far away
and reverberating through everything, just a hair above infrasonic.
An engine, laboring. Large. The clouds reach the ground and Mara
smells the gasoline before she sees the sign announcing "Motortown".
It feels amazing, as unhealthy and filthy as it must be. Inimical to
carbon-based life, even. But it's invigorating. Filling her with
steely, fuming life. She walks past a gas station, where a cadre of
cars roam the parking lot, flashing their lights, honking their horns
and gunning their engines in jovival, aimless fun, and she can feel
the impact of the noise in her heart. It's like a metal concert, she
thinks, except nobody is trampling her.
Although the air is at least as dangerous. Mara starts coughing and
walks back the way she came, briskly. As the fog lifts she sees a
figure in a white coat standing by the water, and her first thought
is the girl must be a ghost.
Nothing about her seems to make sense, and Mara looks at the strange
girl as she walks closer, nothing many strange things. On the back of
the spotless white longcoat is a large red cross, a little crooked.
She stands still, shoulders slumped, unlike anyone she's seen in the
city so far.
And she's alone.
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