Some Girls: People do love to talk about their magic powers without the slightest provocation

 Courage is still the only real magic there is

'So you just touch someone and find out everything that's wrong in their body,' says Mara. 'And then just take it away. Yeah I see why you'd like to warn them first.'

She walks along the river with the Doctor, on a street called Riven Promenaden. Whoever puts names on things in this city have a mystifying or terrifying sense of humor, she decides.

'Yep, it's pretty privacy invading. And I don't even sense just everything that's "wrong," it's everything that's out of the norm. Whatever base template condition for the human body that my power has decided is the norm. Like sexual desire chemicals, that's basically everyone all the time. It feels like, well, like when you're horny for no reason, at the most inappropriate time, and you can't stop it.'

'Oh gross. You can't stop them? Heal away the lust?'

'It's sort of complicated but no, basically, I can only heal bad stuff. Disease, wounds, toxins, alcohol.'

'Wild. So, just help me understand here, or you can stop me if you don't want to talk about stuff.'

'No, it's nice to see someone so curious. What is it you're wondering, Mara Milton?'

'The way that you describe "feeling" what's going on in your patient's body. Is it like, physically, or empathically, you experience it yourself?'

'That's a good question. On one hand, yeah, I'll share your sensations for myself to a degree. It makes sex amazing. But it gets weirder. There's synaesthesia, like diseases have colors, and also, you know the sense you have for your own body, what's it called, proprioception? For me that extends to your body. It's like having four eyes, four lungs, four arms.' The Doctor stops suddenly, for just a short moment, eyes flickering like she thinks about ten different things at the same time.

'That sounds, uh, hard to get used to. Are you well, Doc?'

'Ah, would that I could heal myself. No nothing to worry about, just recalibrating my personality shells. Mmmara Milton. Yes. I still know who you are.'

'Dang, you have a lot of stuff going on do ya.'

'It's a little stressful to make a new friend actually. Would you like to come with me to a bar and probably meet some people I know? I crave familiar ground.'

'Why, that sounds lovely.'

'It's not far from here actually. So, what's going on with you? First night in town and you got sexiled?'

'I mean I had to have a look around. Next time I've got to drag them with me. It's such a great place, this. So unlike everywhere else. And such good kind citizens.'

Mara jumps on a stone bench at a bus stop on the side of the street, where she can stand face to face with the Doctor. There they kiss, briefly, the Doctor urging Mara to do it to balance out her unfair knowledge of Mara's body. It has a crazy kind of logic, thinks Mara, as she presses her lips to the Doctor's, colorless under the soft yellow glow of the streetlight, but very full and warm and awkwardly tender and hesitant. And it seems she does learn about the Doctor's body in turn, as she feels her heart race in exactly the same time as her own, and hears a little moan that perfectly goes with the tingle in her own spine. The Doctor tastes like smoke, it's unpleasant, but it feels wild and dangerous and all those things she went through with her near death experience just before. And, it occurs to Mara, she must taste much worse herself.

'So what drives you to Hearthstown?' says the Doctor, when she's caught her breath. 'Attracted to inexplicable natural phenomena?' She gestures to herself, as if to say that's a rhetorical question.

'Oh, it doesn't hurt.' Mara nods. 'But really we need the money. My girl Ako, she has special needs.' Nine thousand calories a day for example.

'Ah, the housing initiative. Funny isn't it? They pay us to live here and yet there's whole abandoned city districts.'

Maybe it takes a peculiar sort of person to be comfortable in this peculiar place, but so few people even try to move here. It is funny, they conclude, joking about which kind of funny it is.

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Disclaimer: The Doctor is neither inspired by "Doctor Who" (it isn't even her actual name) nor meant as a representation of real Dissociative Identity Disorder.

Some Girls: The number of girls increase

 First,

'Are you okay?' says Mara to the stranger, from a couple of steps away. She turns in Mara's direction, lips pressed together, coat twirling, surprised.

'Who, me?' says the stranger, as Mara bends over, coughing. 'Uh, that sounds bad. Can I see? I'm the Doctor.'

Mara squeaks, out of breath, getting dizzy, failing to straighten up. The pale girl reaches a hand out to her and she takes it, reflexively. A breath catches in her throat and a shiver passes through her and suddenly all Mara knows is a foul taste in her mouth. Bile and chemicals and soot. She spits on the ground, gagging, once more certain she's about to vomit, and the girl steps closer, putting a white-coated arm around her shoulders, a thoughtless gesture of support.

'What the butt?' says Mara, spitting again, mouth mostly clean.

'That crap was in your lungs. Better out than in, right? Sorry, I try to warn people first but when you have trouble breathing, you know, no time. I'm the Doctor.'

'You said. What does that mean?'

'It's what they call me. Because I've got healing powers.' The girl, the Doctor?, fingers a thing on her wrist, a band of large irregular stones Mara thinks may be pearls. Her eyes are white, with a thin black ring where the iris should be. She's the whitest white person Mara has ever seen, white as snow, enough that the pale pink of the corner of her eye stands out, wearing only white, with a thick mess of black hair.

'Oh. Huh. I guess that was some really bad smog.' Mara breathes deep, touching a hand to her chest. 'Um. Do I owe you a big bag of money now or something?'

'It's no big deal. It's a bit like blinking when you've got something in your eye, actually.'

'Cool. Thanks. So, what are you doing here all alone, the Doctor?'

'I'm never alone with the voices in my head, but, just watching. The water, the city.' The Doctor faces the river again, hands in her coat pockets.

'I,' says Mara, backing away without thinking. 'I won't bother you anymore then. Thanks again. I just moved here today. Don't know the, yeah, thanks.'

'You don't have to go,' says the Doctor, with a strange, sad smile, hands dug into her pockets like she's afraid of having them leap out and strangle something.

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Some Girls: Give me that which I desire

 Alone in the blue

Merry, Mara wanders deeper into the night by herself. The rain lightens 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 she has reached 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 (caravan? cluster?) 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, a little too narrow to look like the regular Red Cross cross. Maybe more a plus than a cross. The girl stands still, shoulders slumped, unlike anyone she's seen in the city so far.

And she's alone.

Weirdly, this is both the oldest illustration I've made for Some Girls and the last one you're getting until I make some more

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