Marcielle Hallowes's Questionnaire

Marcielle moved to Richmond for school from her hometown in rural Illinois. During her time in college, she lived off campus in a small apartment block, preferring to live there instead of in campus housing. During her time there, she developed a taste for city life, and has enjoyed it quite a little bit more than her small rural hometown. During her schooling, she picked up a job at a local florist at a corner store, and fell in love with the location. As such, she opted to stay in the area after she was done with school, wanting to build up some funds before moving again.

Her apartment is a small, single bedroom affair, with only a bedroom, bathroom, and small living space with an attached kitchen. Much of the available space in the living area is filled with potted plants, dotted along the window sills, hanging from ceiling hooks and arranged on shelves. There is a small closet near the front door stocked high with spare potting soil, pots, and a couple watering cans. The apartment has a clinging, earthy smell, and is constantly flecked with crumbs of dirt, despite Marcielle's best efforts.

Marcielle works at a local flower shop a couple blocks away from her apartment named Academy Roses. She works full time, mostly in the back room working on arrangements and shipping orders. Despite her area of study, her job currently doesn't feature much cultivation, outside of a small greenhouse in the back used mainly to maintain arrangements and bouquets in the short term, which she tends to.

Marcielle uses most of her money for basic amenities: housing, food, and related utilities. However, she does keep plants as a hobby, those which can survive in apartments, and she has access to the roof of the apartment as well, which she is currently putting a lot of time and money into in order to make a more suitable place for her plants than her little apartment.

Marcielle's family suffered financially early on in her life, and as a result there were many nights where the family didn't have enough to eat. Even though her grandparents on her mother's side eventually swooped in to help get the family back on their feet before things could get to a point that things couldn't be recovered from, the scars were still left behind, and Marcielle knows what it's like to go without food. As a result, she strives to make sure nobody goes through what she went through ever again. Going hungry is something nobody should have to go through, and Marcielle is working to move her life into a direction where she can prevent that.

She would travel the country, the world, looking for anything and everything to continue the research she'd started all the way back in her hometown. She has dedicated her life to studying horticulture and cultivation, wanting to create long lasting food sources that will long outlive their planters, and feed everyone forever.

Marcielle would not kill to further her research. She would, however, die for it. She cannot bring herself to kill a housefly, much less the life of another human being, no matter how vile and ill intentioned. That goes against her work in a way, in her mind. However, as long as her research were comprehensive and complete enough, so long as there was someone or something in place to continue her legacy, she would work herself to death.

To Marcielle, one of her sharpest memories and most notable of events in her life was the day she tasted her first piece of fruit. It was an orange.

As the youngest of three siblings, Marcielle had grown up hungry. Her family situation was already pretty dire when she was first able to make memories, and she had remembered going without food most nights. She had learned, eventually, that it was because of a family squabble that left her parents cut off from most of their previous support network. Either way, life was hard... until her parents made amends with her mother's parents eventually came in person to finally sort things out.

They had brought a bag of fruits with them, and let the kids occupy themselves with them while the adults talked. Marcielle's siblings rooted through the bag for their favorites, while Marcielle waited patiently, finally being given her first fruit. It was round and orange and slightly waxy in her hands, nothing like the limp vegetables they'd gotten when groceries could be afforded. And her first bite was the bitter tang of orange rind. It shocked her tongue, and she spat the half chewed wad on the floor while her siblings laughed. Eventually, they showed her how to peel it, and Marcielle got a real bite of sweet, sticky, tangy and acidic orange.

It was perfect. And Marcielle knew, right then, that she needed to bring more plants like this into the world.

Professor James Tenwick - Professor Tenwick was one of Marcielle's college professors, and is the person Marcielle would consider herself closest with. Tenwick taught Marcielle in her second year of college, and she immediately gravitated to his classes. He was strict and to the point, an intense hardass and unforgiving when it came to his courses. However, where he lacked in empathy and patience in his teaching, he made up for it outside of the classroom. Marcielle grew close to him when attending his office hours for the first time, and found him alone in the university's small little greenhouse. From there, she spent as much time as she could with him, taking in what he could teach and following his lead on where to find resources for what he could not. She still continues to meet with him on weekends for lunch and chats, still feeling like his protegee even though he insists he's got nothing more to teach her.

Pauline Flouse - Pauline is Marcielle's boss at Academy Roses. Marcielle does not particular like her, but sees her often now that schedules have been adjusted. Pauline is mean and nit-picky, and is way too interested in making sure Marcielle does things her way. Thankfully, Pauline works mainly management and paperwork, and hates the humidity, so if Marcielle needs to escape her, she can run and hide and 'do work' (or actually do work) in the greenhouse.

Patricia Hallowes - Patricia is Marcielle's older sister, and the only person from her family that she is still particularly close to. Marcielle still calls her Patty to this day, much to Patty's annoyance. They try to have a video call at least once a week, but Patty got married recently and Marcielle has been shifted into proper full time at her job, so their chats have been few and far between. Still, they have a mutual level of respect and closeness to each other, and try to keep each other updated on any family gossip or bizarre life circumstances that the other has become privy to.