She fainted shortly therafter.
As she fell backwards, I caught her head to cushion it against the fall. I had learned that head injuries were bad from the random bits of conversation I listened in on while still in captivity.
The rest of her body fell with a muffled "thump", but I protected her skull from harm.
I released my hold on her, positioned her nbody so that it leaned against the alley wall, and started to make my way up the next building.
Why did I catch her head? Simple. If she had a head injury from fainting, it'd easily come up that I was there. What if she had no head injury, she was completely fine, and was found sitting in an alley?
She regained consciousness about a second after I reached the top of the building.
Instead of being a normal human female and panicking, she called out to me.
Seriously, she made no sense to me.
Oh. And her name was Autumn.
"Little fern!" Autumn called out to me, somehow pausing the movement of my roots. "Come back!"
She could clearly see some of my fronds dangling over the top of the roof as I had just ascended, and began gesturing for me to come down.
If I hadn't decided to trust her and come back down, I'd probably have ended up back at the lab.
"Stay here for a bit." Aurora said, stroking some of my fronds. "I want to keep you."
She giggled and left, returning shortly with a pot full of soil.
To this day, it remains a mystery to me where she got the pot from. There were no garden shops nearby, no available soil, and not even a residence nearby for her to ask for a pot from.
I rooted myself temprarily into the soil and allowed her to carry me to her house while I photosynthesized.
While we walked, she would occasionally make a comment to me, telling me where she would plant me, how often she'd water me, etc.
This behavior got her stopped by a person from the security team in the lab.
"Why are you talking to the fern?" The man asked, trying to mask the fact that he was ogling at her body.
She blushed.
"I talk to all my plants." She said, hiding her face behind her free hand.
"Alright, move along." The man waved a hand and observed her posterior as she walked away, clearly appreciating the sight.
As she walked, the second her face wasn't visible to the security guard, her blush vanished and she resumed her previous bubbly demeanor, making the same comments.
She perplexed me then, and she perplexes me now, but I don't regret my decision to go with her.
The whole walk to her house took about an hour, but I didn't mind the wait. I was too busy reveling in every breeze that blew through my pinnas, taking in every sight I could, and enjoying the feeling of sunlight on my fronds.
She unlocked the door of her house and I got to see the naturally lit interior.
Her home was relatively small. It wasn't furnished with anything special, just a table and a chair in the dining room, a tv and beanbag in the living room, and a bed in the bedroom, but it was brightly lit by the sun.
She set down the pot I had rooted in on the table, along with her house keys, and started talking to me as if talking to a sapient plant was something she did regularly.
"Are you thirsty?" She talked to me like I was a person, which, admittedly, is kind of amusing. "I'll water you."
She walked to the sink and filled up a small plastic cup with water.
"Did you eat on the way here, or should I give you food?" She kicked her high heels across the room and into the next, landing them next to the door. "I have some Miracle Gro on hand."
I didn' know what Miracle Gro was at the time, but I was sure I didn't want it. So, when she came over with the bottle of the Miracle Gro, I shook my fronds violently, deterring her from putting it in my dirt.
"You already ate, huh?" Aurora put the bottle away. "You thirsty?"
She held up the plastic cup of water.
I stimulated as best I could a nod. It probably looked like a bow, but she got the message easily enough.
She watered me and got into her fridge to acquire a high-calorie substance that she eats instead of photosynthesizing.
She ate the amorphous substance with a metal utensil and observed me in between bites.
When I said she was an enigma to me, I meant I couldn't understand her motivations or her goals, and to this day I have no idea why she asked this question.
"Why didn't you fuck me?" She asked me, cocking her head to one side.