Lynxes and Minxes [SOUTH]

It had been several days since her last hit. And she was now beginning to feel it. The spacing out that she felt now, as she wandered seemingly aimlessly through the streets of the old medical hub. By comparison to what it had been in it's heyday, it was quaint. Ariel smiled, remembering her lesson with Fionna about the change in what drove District Two's fortunes now. And right about now, she could do with a hospital. Not to actually be looked after. So that she could lift some morphling without actually having to pay for it. Though, she had ways of ensuring the payment, or at least the procuring of payment, was as pleasurable as possible. She sighed at the memory of the last time, before a peal of agony washed over her.

She'd been careless, so engrossed as she had been in studies, she had forgotten completely about maintaining a stable, low dosage of the drug which both blighted her life, and provided blissful release from all feeling, even if that fleeting oblivion was becoming shorter and shorter a duration. The shaking was beginning to set in, a slight jitter in her left ring finger. That was where it started. She veered down a side-street, the uncontrollable motions of her digits worsening as she walked, before she leant against a wall, reaching into the delicate handbag she carried, as deftly as one can do when your hands seem to want to mimic an earthquake. The tremors that wracked her body had come on much more suddenly than she remembered them doing before. Or perhaps her perception of time was becoming skewed. Either way, she needed a hit. Now.

Anxiety punctured her actions, her shaking becoming so violent that she had to tighten her grip on the vial to stop it from tumbling from her hands onto the ground. She over-compensated, and it shattered in her hands, eliciting a cry of anguish, the clear liquid flowing through her hands as she slumped down onto her knees, blood pumping from the lacerations on her hand, shaking so violently she was unable to co-ordinate herself. This was the worst she had been since Fionna and her sisters had found her face down in the gutter, trembling from the cold, barely coherent. She cursed loudly, a slightly garbled slew of insults at herself tumbling from a barely functioning tongue. It would pass in a few hours. But it was going to be a rough few hours. The world drifted in and out of focus, nausea, paranoia and a headache that could tumble cities to the ground gripped her. She passed out before she could contemplate the mess she was in.

She awoke to something licking her face. Something wet nuzzled her cheek, making her smile, her stiff joints refusing to co-operate and allow her to get up. She just lay there as the 'something' or 'someone' continued to nuzzle, and occasionally lick her. She still felt absolutely awful. Her head pounded, each beat of her heart hammering the inside of her head, lethargy resisting even the urge to open her eyes. She lay there for a good two minutes before finally pushing her urge to just stay completely motionless for the rest of her life, and opened her eyes. And immediately regretted it.

In the back of her mind, she knew it was a hallucination. After all, there was no animal on earth that was purple, and oozed orange from it's fur. But it was so compelling. And terrifying. Her pupils, dilated far beyond any semblance of normality, widened further still, before contracting, and dilating again, pulsing randomly, out of sync, beginning to hyperventilate, short sharp 'eeps' of terror. She curled up into a ball, before squeezing her eyes shut again. A shriek welled up in her chest, before she simply wailed, a pathetic mewling noise, unable to muster the proper reaction.