Aconite (Open)
She knows she probably shouldn’t be wandering alone so late at night but in Aeris’s defense, she’d done so numerous times back in Midgar and it wasn’t like she was completely helpless. Sure Princess Guard’s form had changed but Aeris had more than a few tricks up her sleeve to make up for that. The girl had grown up in the Sector 5 slums after all. This wasn’t all too different from returning home from the abandoned church where she’d grown her flowers.
Still, Aeris keeps her guard up. After the incident, she’d not dropped it once since arriving in Wonderland. ‘Fool me once’ as the saying goes.
The girl begins to cut through an ally, a shortcut she’d taken from her apartment to the Gardens earlier in the day. It’s not the best of shortcuts, considering how dark it is without sunlight or streetlights, but it’s not that long of an ally. Although at night it does feel like a mile long.
Aeris holds her flower basket closer to her. She is wholly aware that she shouldn’t have spent so long in the flowerbed this evening, but there are just so many beautiful flowers there. How could Aeris ever resist? In her defense though, the flowers she was bringing home today did require special handling. There was a good reason aconite or ‘wolfsbane’ symbolized ‘caution’. They were highly poisonous, though such a thing never stopped Aeris before of course.
As she muses of the perfect spot to put the violet colored flowers when she finally reaches home, a sound behind Aeris snaps her out of her thoughts. She registers it as the sound of a can rattling and the girl freezes, fear biting at her heart. It just had to come from behind her didn’t it? The one area of her person where the scars of the past were still fresh on her mind. It could just be an animal rooting through the trash. That was probably it right?
But her better judgement knows it’s not and Aeris reluctantly whirls around. Just in the nick of time to, as the to be assailant lunges for her. It’s far too dark to make out exact details but the girl does make out the large knife being aimed for her throat. Forgoing her flower basket, Aeris instinctively raises her arm to protect herself and the knife sinks into her forearm. She manages to withhold the cry of pain that bubbles up from within her and shove past them as her fight or flight response takes over.
She doesn’t know if they’re giving chase or not but as Aeris runs, she quickly tries to take stock of the situation. If they were giving chase then she desperately needed to either find someone for help or somewhere to hide. Next is the injury she sustained. The cut is not life threatening or particularly deep, only bleeding moderately. It probably looked far worse than it actually was. Still, Aeris holds it tightly to herself, applying pressure to help stop the bleeding.
Thankfully, as luck often smiled upon her, one establishment still seemed to be open on the street she was running down judging from the still lit lights from within. With no second thoughts, Aeris bursts in and quickly slams the door shut behind her. While the girl does feel guilt about almost breaking down the door and causing such a horrific noise, this was an emergency after all.
Certainly who ever was still within the building had heard the awful noise and would come to investigate and hopefully aid Aeris.
