"Hey there little heroine," Evelyn giggled at her friend's scowl while kneeling down in front of the couch, "Sorry it took so long. James is stabilized and doing great; so, your turn now. Give me your hand and we'll have a look."

"Who you callin' little, ya fragile flower?" Samantha fired back.

The fierce little heroine tucked her legs to her chest and pulled up the blanket to cover her knees. She didn't want to be left alone, so David had simply sat down on the couch without putting her down. There Samantha stayed, leaning up against him, sipping a mug of something chocolatey and spicy. She crossed her arms in pouty mock-offense at her friend's comment.

"Petite protector?" Evelyn smirked. "Diminutive defender?"

"Listen here, you!"

"Compact champion."

"Okay, that one's a bit rough."

"Yeah... scratch that last one, the alliteration doesn't really flow."

"A poet you are not. Anyway, I didn't see you out there braving the backyard amidst monsters as large as a medium-sized rabbit."

"Brave, brave Samantha," Evelyn admired, "she valiantly faced down the small, furry specter of... if not Death, then at least Noticeable Discomfort."

She took Samantha's hand out from under the blanket. Then, using that as her contact point, she began the visualization step of her healing process.

"Hmm, yes, I deserve a medal for my blatant demonstration of inadvisable bravery. Or perhaps a trophy?"

"I think I've still got a few upstairs you can borrow. Except they're all for soccer rather than raccoon wrestling."

"What? No trophies up there for regularly getting your arms shredded by tiny beasts? What kind of boring childhood were you forced to endure?"

"Speaking of which: this is the second arm you've destroyed in the last twenty four hours," Evelyn noted. "You don't need a trophy, you need a frequent-fighter punch card."

She then swapped to a more serious tone, "Hold on, I'm disconnecting your sense of pain for your right arm, this might feel a little weird."

"Oh? Hmm... Oh, wow." Samantha's eyes opened wide as Evelyn suppressed a specific set of nerves to her arm. "That feels... Yeah. Weird is definitely the right word for it."

"Start putting pressure on the spots where your arm is torn up, and I'll reconnect things. I've applied a complete sensory block to the arm that will expire in about half an hour, which should be plenty of time to fix it up. Then there's a partial block that will slowly fade over about four hours after that."

"That's not very long," Samantha said with some trepidation as she used her left hand to squeeze her right forearm.

Evelyn began the slow process of stitching muscles, nerves, and blood vessels back together. This last day of nearly constant healing had provided her with a level of insight and experience that had turned out to be indispensable. Healing right now was all about efficiency, and Evelyn had immensely improved her Art of Efficient Healing Despite Horrible Mana Control.

Working her way through Samantha's individual wounds, she used her thumb to massage the muscle fibers into contact across each gap and then reattached the bundles of fibers to hold the wound closed. However, rather than reattaching every single muscle fiber like she had originally done yesterday, now she reattached small bundles, and only around one muscle fiber out of twenty. It was just enough to hold things together and seal the wound, and then Samantha's own healing would be able to kick in and efficiently stitch the rest back together over the next few hours.

"Four hours may not seem like long," said Evelyn, "but that's because you're thinking of traditional chemistry-based medicine. Mana healing is much quicker. I've gotten a lot of practice with Dana at pain management, and it's all a balancing act. We discovered that when your senses are suppressed, it seems that your brain dials up the sensitivity to compensate. So, the longer your arm stays numb, the worse it will hurt afterward."

"Well, that sucks."

"Then stop getting your arms torn off. The solution isn't nearly as complicated as you all seem to think."

Evelyn continued to heal, with Samantha patiently assisting in the process. After a few minutes, Samantha spoke up.

"In retrospect, I did act a little recklessly, didn't I? I haven't been thinking straight today. I don't really feel like myself anymore."

"I assume you meant to say 'awesomely' instead of 'recklessly.' In which case, yes. You acted very awesomely. James owes you at least his eye, and possibly even his life."

"Yeah. That's what I meant. Awesomely. Right." Samantha replied. "Thank you for correcting my word choice. It turns out I'm actually quite the badass, just cleverly disguised as a dumbass."

Samantha's tone was still quiet, and her meaning difficult for Evelyn to tell. It sounded like Samantha was trying to convince herself that what she did out there wasn't bad, but Evelyn couldn't imagine why she was conflicted about it to begin with.

"Okay, in all seriousness this time," Evelyn looked up for a second to make sure Samantha was paying attention, "what you did out there was extremely badass. James couldn't stop talking about how amazing and cool and wonderful you are. No joke, the kid adores you. And honestly, I have no reason to disagree with him."

The healing continued quietly for another five minutes. Whispered conversations between Dana and James from across the room only managed to highlight the silence rather than disturbing it. Eventually Samantha spoke.

"I don't feel wonderful," she muttered quietly. "I feel like an awful excuse for a human. I knew better than to leave him alone out there but my brain is... It's so... broken... now. It doesn't work anymore. I'm a mess. I'm not... me. I'm not a real person anymore."

Evelyn utterly failed to suppress a groan of annoyance. For the life of her, Samantha apparently just couldn't accept a compliment.

"Oh, come on! Show yourself a little human decency. We all make--" Evelyn paused a moment to reconsider, "Actually no, I wouldn't even call that a mistake. You had no reason to think an animal would attack in broad daylight like that. None of us expected that. You can't beat yourself up for not predicting something utterly crazy. There's nothing actually wrong with you."

Samantha was being unfairly hard on herself again, as so often used to happen when they were younger. It used to drive Evelyn crazy back then, and she found this conversation frustrating in ways that were all too familiar. Though they hadn't spent much time together in years, it was surprising how quickly they fell into their old patterns.

"Yeah? Well," Samantha continued in her hushed tone, "that's not the only reason why I'm worried about what's going on with me, you know. It's not like I just came up with this out of nowhere."

Normally Evelyn would take the obvious hint and ask her friend what was troubling her, but right now she wasn't having any more of that "I'm not a real person" bullshit. So instead, she changed the subject.

Unauthorized duplication: this narrative has been taken without consent. Report sightings.

"Have I missed any injuries? How hurt did you get in that fight?" she asked. "You're self-healing so quickly that it's actually difficult for me to tell. In fact, your injuries from yesterday are almost entirely gone now."

"The thing did bite and scratch me a bunch, but only on my right arm and hand."

"Hm, well, congratulations on your improved durability, then. You're healing up at least twice as fast as everyone else. I wonder if it's because of the changes to your--" Evelyn caught herself and cut that thought short. She didn't like speculating out loud, but in her haste to keep a positive conversation going she had just talked without thinking.

"Because of what changes?" asked Samantha, now suddenly listening closely.

Evelyn really didn't want to go into this, but leaving it as just a tantalizing hint of mystery would be even worse. She might as well just say it.

"Your pattern has changed. And maybe that's part of why you're in so much better condition."

Samantha just stared and blinked a few times before eventually making a "keep going" motion with her hand.

"Your pattern -- I don't know if there's a real name for it, but I mean the pattern for your body," she explained. "Normally, the way your body heals is down to biology and genetics and stuff. Except, mana works way too fast for that, so when your innate mana-based healing rebuilds your body, it follows a pattern. Mostly this is what your body looked like beforehand. In this case, I've noticed that your pattern is different now from what it was last night."

"So, you're saying that all this mana is changing me into something else, then. Something that isn't me."

"I don't think I would phrase it like that."

"But it is true, just the same."

Samantha sounded certain, as if Evelyn was confirming something she already knew. To Evelyn, though, it sounded like she was just following her own internal narrative without trying to understand what was actually going on.

"No. I'm not saying that at all. Your body is getting stronger and more capable; that's what I see. I've noticed that your muscles are getting tighter and packing far more usable strength into the same space. They've started incorporating a new kind of protein that's just crazy-strong like Kevlar or something, and it also has far more pulling strength, too. It's unlike anything I've seen before. It's still early days, but by next week we'll be able to make bulletproof vests out of your damn biceps. It so much easier for me to heal with, too; you have no idea how much nicer this is. And your bones are way stronger; I can see new reinforcing patterns of some material I don't recognize woven right into the bones themselves, making them at least dozens of times stronger without getting any bigger. It's a lot of little things, invisible things, but they add up."

"Yeah, but what about my head?"

"Hm? What? What about it?"

Samantha just sat quietly for a moment, biting her lip, then apparently came to a decision.

"Ugh. Nevermind."

"Alright Samantha, seriously. What is it?" Evelyn said with more than a hint of annoyance. She didn't want to be dragged in circles with this conversation. If Samantha wanted to say something then she should damn well just say it.

"Are you done with my arm?"

"Yes, I think you're in good shape now as far as healing is concerned."

"Okay, then go away please."

Samantha turned to look away, but since she was sitting sideways on the couch, that meant turning to put her face into the couch cushions.

"What?" The teenage pettiness of it all caught Evelyn by surprise, and only added to her frustration with the situation.

"Please just go away," said Samantha, sniffling into the couch cushions.

Evelyn stood up, but there was nowhere in particular to go. And anyway, why should she have to leave the room? This was where she had been working for the entire day. Plus, Evelyn had gone out of her way to make Samantha feel appreciated. How had this gone so badly?

After standing awkwardly in front of the couch for a minute, she finally sat down at the table with the inscription patterns she had been working on. But as the minutes passed, she couldn't make any progress on her work.

A short while later, David spoke up, quietly, to Samantha sitting next to him. But in the quiet, Evelyn could hear just fine.

"You don't feel so good, do you," he observed, stating the obvious.

"No," Samantha whispered, barely loud enough to hear.

"And you're worried?"

"Yeah."

"Scared?"

"Yes."

"Scared of what?"

There was a pause, but eventually Samantha replied, even more quietly than before:

"Me."

She still had her face buried in the cushions, so her whispered voice came muffled. The hushed conversation from Dana's side of the room had stopped, and Gary had put down his pen to listen. The entire room had become completely silent. Evelyn even found herself breathing slowly so as to not make any noise.

"What scares you about yourself?" he continued.

"It's not me."

"What's not you?"

"I'm not me."

Evelyn got a sinking feeling in her chest about where this was going, but she kept quiet and let the two of them continue without interruption. Samantha had clearly tried to talk to her about it, but Evelyn had treated it like childish self-deprecation.

"You're not you?" David continued, inviting her to elaborate.

"I'm trying!" Samantha keened, "but it feels like it's consuming me from the inside. It burrows into my head and I can't make it stop. I can't figure out how to fight it. And it's turning me into something I don't want to be."

"And so, you were hoping that Evelyn would..."

David paused to allow Samantha to finish the sentence, but instead she just curled up tighter, shrinking into as small a target as possible.

"... help you find out what was wrong?" David offered after seeing that she wasn't about to talk.

Samantha didn't reply, but instead just nodded. Then she tensed up like she expected to be hit by something.

"Oh," Evelyn muttered to herself, "I'm literally the worst friend in the world."

Not only had she dismissed Samantha's deepest worries without even bothering to hear them, but bringing up the pattern change would have only confirmed her worst fears. Everybody's pattern changes every day; that's just what growth is. Samantha's changes had caught Evelyn by surprise, but she didn't mean to imply that Samantha was becoming some sort of monster.

"Would you still be willing to let her help you?" David asked.

Samantha nodded again, but Evelyn didn't wait; she was back in front of the couch so fast that her knees slid across the wooden floor. She took Samantha's unresisting hand and began her visualization again.

She did another sweep looking for anything that might seem out of place, but nothing stood out.

"So? What's been bothering you?" Evelyn asked, hoping to get a bit of background about what she was looking for.

Samantha just shrugged, still with her back turned.

Evelyn sensed her own frustration rising again with such an unhelpful response, but she quickly quashed it. She reminded herself that Samantha wasn't trying to be difficult; she was just overwhelmed.

Samantha had made that comment earlier -- "what about my head?" -- which Evelyn had dismissed out of hand. She'd done so on purpose.

Evelyn was extremely uneasy about using magic to mess with anyone's brain, and even now was hesitant to consider it. Of all of the parts of the body, this was the one she felt the least certain about, despite the fact that it was the specialization she'd chosen at school. Her biggest takeaway from her education was that the more you understood about how human minds work, the more you come to realize just how much you still don't know.

Gary might have some insight here, but his expertise was more around engineering than medicine, improving how brains work rather than restoring them. In fact, Evelyn had an ongoing argument with him about this exact topic that started last night and had only escalated as the day wore on. He had explained a dozen times that mana was changing the way neurons work, suggesting that magic was going to muddle people's heads, and his new system was probably going to be required for their long-term survival. But she couldn't get past the worry that he might irreversibly scramble his own brain while testing whatever he built, and then she wouldn't know how to heal him. That possibility was a true nightmare for her.

She might consider asking his opinion on whatever she discovered here, but she didn't want to make him even more determined to build that stupid system of his.

She tried having a look at Samantha's head, but it was hard to make heads or tails of anything. Nothing blatantly obvious stood out; no injuries or foreign objects or anything like that. And the brain activity itself was just a blur. Samantha's problem, whatever it was, was probably somewhere in that blur of activity, but Evelyn didn't even know where to start.

Taking a metaphorical step back, she revisited the larger picture. There were a lot of body changes that could be examined, but nothing that seemed even remotely bad. These had been positive changes made from a positive starting point. While Samantha had always been in amazing physical shape her whole life, now she had a body that would make any world champion athlete deeply envious, beyond what any human could have even aspired to before yesterday.

Her mind, though? Evelyn didn't know where to start and found even the idea overwhelming. There was just so much going on inside her head. It was unclear what to even look at.

She ended the visualization and sat back with a frown, considering what to do next. She needed information. For that, she would need Samantha to start talking again. Luckily, it looked like Samantha now just needed the right kind of excuse to smile.

"Hey there, you sexy little huntress," Evelyn started, earning her an eyebrow raise from David. "Would you mind telling me exactly what's bothering you? Like, from the very beginning?"

"Do you honestly think you can make me feel better just by giving me unsolicited compliments about my looks?" she huffed into the cushion.

"It has never failed to work so far," Evelyn laughed.

"Ugh. I hate that you know me so well."

"Less complaining, more explaining," Evelyn said, giving her a slap on her hip. "Now turn around and spill it."

"I swear, Evie, you will never cease to be..." Samantha shook her head as she turned and gave a weak smile, gesturing with a wave at Evelyn, "...you, I guess."

"I sure hope not!"

"Yeah." Samantha sighed with an eyeroll. "Yeah, I suppose I do too."