Cultivating Mom's garden had been simple enough but the soil there remained less than ideal. Aeris had coaxed the flowers into growing from the near barren ground, but the blooms never quite looked how they did in her books or imagination. There was a potential she had yet to achieve; she could do better. But first she would need somewhere else to grow her flowers. Wandering the slums was something she had done for years - ever since she first ran from Tseng seven years ago. After that Mom was more or less powerless to keep her in view of the house and she delighted in her freedom. It had been during one of these wanderings when she found the abandoned church a few months ago and ventured inside.
Aeris's attention was soon distracted by the damaged floor. A chunk of rock from some moment long past - before or after the plate's construction she neither knew or concerned herself with - had crashed through the floorboards of the church and revealed what lay beneath. Soil. Unlike the dry and near hard-packed mud bordering the river, this earth felt almost alive. She had reached out, touched it, marveled at the sensation. An idea; a second garden, here in this church. She stared upwards towards the cracked and badly patched roof. The grey cloud-bank that so often shrouded the city had parted for a moment and blue sky was just about visible. Actual sunlight fell down through the upper city, through the holes in the roof - right down to her feet.
There could be few better places in the slums to even attempt growing something - anything. Aeris set to work the next day. Samples of seeds from mom's house, bottled water from the store - with a few extra nutrients to make up for anything the processed water lacked. The flowers did not take long to begin springing up from the soil. Aeris slowly tore the floor away in sections as time went on. The plants and flowers clung to the soil with a tenacity she would never have expected, even as the soil spilled across the floorboards, the depth almost non-existent. The flowers flourished in spite of the implausibility and her garden grew beyond her expectations.
Three months after she started, Aeris paused in her work. Mom had never seen the garden. She should - or at least see the flowers; Mom was often exhausted when she got home from work so asking her to wander all the way over here sounded a bad plan. But... Mom needed to see these. Needed to see flowers, actual flowers in the slums. Aeris rushed to the market and bought a cheap a wicker basket. With murmured apologies she plucked some of the best flowers from the garden. The excitement of showing off to Mom made her a little too eager and the basket was fuller and heavier than expected. Had she taken too many? Aeris surveyed the wealth of flowers still growing in the reverent silence of the church. No need to worry - the garden was still bursting with colours - and it was not as if she could put these back now. Aeris glanced at her watch and grimaced. It would be cutting it close to get back home before dinner now.
Almost home; nearly to the market and from there it was only a short walk to the oddly secluded part of the sector where she lived. "Hey!" A woman's voice called out behind her. Aeris kept walking, her grip on her staff tightening. As much as Sector Five felt safe, Mom never tired of impressing upon her the potential dangers here. "Hey! Wait up!" the voice came again. Running feet behind her. Aeris sighed. She would rather not deal with this right now, get home and not risk losing any flowers in a scuffle. Turning, she saw a stranger with long red hair tied back in a pony-tail and an eye-patch over her right eye jogging towards her. The woman grinned at her and slowed down. She was clutching a bunch of withered flowers in one hand. "Hi!" she said. "Sorry," she added a moment later as she blinked at Aeris.
"Hi," Aeris replied cautiously, setting her feet for potential combat.
The woman scratched her head and glanced up towards the plate. "So... I..." She thrust the bunch of flowers forward and bowed her head. "Please sell me some of your flowers!" she said abruptly.
"...um?" Aeris said blinking.
"Flowers!" the woman said meeting her gaze. "Look, I'm really late for a date with my girlfriend, it's our..." She frowned. "Year and a half anniversary... Yeah. Never mind! I've had the worst day ever and..." She glanced at her flowers, her fist tightening around them. "And these; these are all I could scrape together to give her." She shook the sickly looking flowers.
"They... don't look well..." Aeris observed, still uncertain of the situation.
"Exactly!" The woman said. "Whereas yours... Just look at them! I've never seen anything like that in Midgar before. She would so love them. So... how much do you want?"
Aeris glanced at her basket. They were all supposed to be for mom, but... Mom never liked to say anything, but it was clear that money was becoming increasingly tight. It was also impossible to ignore that she herself was something of an unanticipated, seven year drain on already tricky finances. If she could make a little extra by selling flowers... "I'll give you a bouquet for twenty gil," she offered.
The woman's grin vanished. "Are you serious?!" she yelled. Aeris twitched. "These cost me twenty gil!" The woman flung her dying bunch of flowers towards the wall of junk lining the path. "Yours are worth more than that!"
"Oh... okay. Fifty?" Aeris offered. The woman fumbled in her bag and pulled out her purse.
"I have... huh. Okay, can you break a hundred?" she asked. Aeris shook her head. The woman sighed and shrugged. "Fine. Here. Take it." She held out a hundred gil note.
"Are you sure?" Aeris said as she cautiously took the money.
"Yes!" The woman said. "Seriously I still think I'm getting a bargain."
Aeris smiled and fished in her basket for a selection of flowers. "Any preferences?" she asked not sure where to start.
"She likes yellow..." the woman said watching her hands.
"Yellow it is then," Aeris said. She dragged a sheet of the newspaper lining the basket and twisted it around a generous bouquet. "Here you go."
The woman took it, sniffed at the flowers and sighed. "Perfect. Thank you. Thank you so much! You really saved me!" She glanced at her watch. "No time! I gotta go." She charged off down the street, stopped and turned back to wave. "If I see you around I'll buy more!"
Aeris waved back and watched as the woman hurtled off down the street at a sprint. Her basket was still over half full of flowers. She carried on home, her head buzzing with ideas. One hundred gil for some flowers. The woman had probably still gotten a bargain - given how much time and effort she had expended on the flowers, but still. To have someone pay her for the flowers like that. She blinked. Of course. Most flowers in the city were not so different from that limp bunch the woman had discarded. She had never seen anything like her own. If one person would be willing to buy flowers, then so might others.
A vision; a greener Midgar, the concrete and metal hidden beneath grasses, vines and flowers. A city of life and fresh air rather than the darkened, Mako stink of the present. Tomorrow. Tomorrow she would pick more flowers and begin spreading them, begin spreading life around the city - in exchange for some gil of course.