#iris rowe

[yesterdaysprint]

Robert Quinault and Iris Rowe, 1923

[victoryroadhq]

IRIS ROWE

AGE: Twenty-three. BIRTHDAY: February 27th. HOMETOWN: Floaroma Town, Sinnoh. OCCUPATION: Bug Catcher. STARTER: Wurmple, male, Lax. FACECLAIM: Alycia Debnam-Carey. STATUS: Open.  

BEGINNINGS IN FLOAROMA TOWN…

For generations, the Rowes have owned the Pick a Peck of Colors Flower Shop. When it was first set up by Iris’s grandparents the shop only sold flowers and plants, along with a few other basics such as fertilizer, soil, and plant food. Iris’s father, Basil, didn’t have much ambition to expand it, happy to leave the lazy little flower shop in the middle of the meadow the way it was and live out his life peacefully arranging flowers. That is, until a recent business graduate from Jubilife City named Carol passed through on her way to Hearthome and he became infatuated with her. Seeing as Basil had only known most of the residents of his small town for his entire life, he wasn’t exactly a smooth talker. While Carol was in his shop, he mostly only managed to show off their vast assortment of water cans and somehow get her number to “help expand the business”. He spent long hours on the phone with her, writing down each and every tip she gave him only to try them out in the shop later on. He started planting Berries outside the shop to sell to Trainers and postcards to those who wanted to remember their idyllic Floaroma Meadow fondly. When one day Carol told him she was coming to visit to see the progress the shop had made, Basil knew he couldn’t blow it again. He packed a picnic lunch for them and brought it up to his favorite spot on the hill overlooking the flower fields. He hadn’t accounted for how different actually seeing her would be though, he was so used to being calm and collected during their phone conversations. He felt himself choking again as he handed her a ham and cheese sandwich from the basket, but she stopped him, reaching in and finding the bunch of Cheri blossoms he’d stowed away inside for her. Before Basil knew what was happening, she leaned forward and kissed him square on the mouth. It was the single best moment of his life.

Fast forward twenty-five years and Carol Rowe had made even more renovations to the little flower shop, collecting and selling berries from faraway places by trading Pokemon contest hopefuls for accessories and a full range of souvenirs to sentimental tourists. Iris knew her mother had always expected she’d follow in her father’s footsteps and take over the family business. It wasn’t that Iris didn’t love plants, since she was small she’d always been happy to toddle around the meadows sniffing flowers or to get her hands dirty in their greenhouse harvesting the season’s Oran berries. It was just that there was something she loved even more: Bug Pokemon. When she was little, she’d always loved to watch Caterpies crawling over tree leaves and slowly forming into Metapods only to emerge later in the season as beautiful Butterfree. She’d been so obsessed that her father had bought her a butterfly kit full of baby Wurmple the year she turned eleven as a late birthday present. Iris had dutifully brought the tiny worm Pokemon leaves every day and watched in awe as some of them became Cascoons and some Silcoons before reaching their final evolutions of Dustox or Beautifly. When all the other bugs had flown off though, there was still one little Wurmple that was content to sit in the net of it’s home and munch happily on the provided vegetation. Iris was worried she’d done something wrong and began bringing the Wurmple out to the Meadow every day after school, letting him eat the fresh leaves before bringing him back home to the net in hopes that he’d form a cocoon at night. But every time it failed and finally she decided to leave him in the Meadow since she was clearly not a good enough caretaker to help him. But as she was walking away, the little worm cried, inching after her as fast as he could. Iris couldn’t bear to leave him alone, so she took him back home and kept him as her pet - despite her mother’s many protests that he left holes in plants she’d intended to sell.

As Iris got older, it became clearer and clearer that she lacked her mother’s killer instinct when it came to business. She was often caught red-handed giving free berries to trainers instead of using them as currency like she was supposed to but her mother’s numerous lectures about her undermining their business plan didn’t seem to do any good. Iris still just wanted other people to love berries and give them to their Bug Pokemon too, her Wurmple loved chewing on them while she arranged flowers in the shop and every Pokemon deserved that same happiness. Still, she went off to business school at Jubilife U like her mother wanted - and if she occasionally audited a Botany class, who did it hurt? And after graduation, she returned home when all of her friends went off on their own adventures in big cities or far-off regions. Iris tried her best to muster up the same enthusiasm she’d had when she worked at the flower shop in high school, but she felt frustrated just being there. She had grown up but she was still stuck in the same exact place she’d been as a kid - listening to her mom critique everything she did and never, ever winning an argument. It was her dad who found her sitting up on their spot in the meadow alone one day and gave her the flyer for Professor Oak’s Pokemon Challenge. He told her that running the flower shop had been right for him but he knew that Iris was miserable there and more than anything he wanted her to be happy. He thought that maybe training was the key to finally evolving her Wurmple like she’d always wanted and it could help her figure out what she wanted to do in the process. Iris agreed to go instantly and hugged her father, she was excited to finally have her own adventure on the horizon. When they got home and told her mother, she wasn’t exactly thrilled but she agreed that her daughter needed to be more prepared if she did take over the family business and thought maybe it’d help her gain some maturity.

IRIS ROWE IS CURRENTLY OPEN (NAME, AGE, PRONOUNS, TIMEZONE)