RAGE (Diabolus)Black amber erupting with a dark volcanic surge of fiery dragon's blood and a burst of melati, rose geranium, mandarin and black currant.
A tug at my upstretched arm, and I step out of the relentless sun into the cool shade of the grocer's awning. Incense, black tea and oil in the air. Grimy glass jars full of salty treats at my eye level - sweets are nowhere to be found. The grocer smiles with yellowing teeth, smooth brown head shining under the lone bulb.
"A block of jaggery," Mother snaps from somewhere above.
Thud. The distant spice of cane fields tickles my nostrils. Then the rustle of old paper, the low whirr as the ball of twine unravels at the grocer's command, scattering discordant particles of woody dust when he snips off a parsimonious length to tie the package off.
"Goodbye, child" he says to me, his tongue an unnatural red between his black lips.
Ulalume (Bewitching Brews)Starry white lilies lend an eerie brightness to the deep black wooded scents of cypress and oak, layered with a touch of crushed dried leaves and the faintest aquatic note.
Ulalume was her name, and skipping rope was her game.
She was a little black child in a faded white sundress, maybe seven or eight years old - the dress and the child, both. She skipped in the most surprising ways through the most surprising times: sideways in the morning rain, high and floaty in the springtime, backflips through war and running skips when the bees chased her. Sometimes she climbed trees - the tall straight ones that only knew to grow straight up with no complicated networks of branches, and she stayed till past sundown to see if she could catch dew happening. But that wasn't very often.
Ulalume was her name, and skipping rope was her game.
And when time came for her to go home, she left behind a mist of sundrops that condensed gently into the lake, each plop of each drop as clear as the thwack of her skipping rope.
Hamadryad (Bewitching Brews)Hamadryads are born into a tree that serves as both a home and an anchor for the creature’s soul. They are sometimes tricksters, sometimes seducers, sometimes helpful and benign, but they are always fierce and furious protectors of the natural world. Seven dry woods with mossy lichen and a gentle breeze of forest flowers.
.... I'm sorry, but this one smells exactly like Iodex to me. I tried to write a funny piece about it, but I can't keep a straight face, and everybody knows the worst jokes are always told by laughing people. :)
I discovered BPAL scents through M-, who is 'Alchemilla' on the BPAL forums (I am Wendelin, but this information is useless to you because I haven't posted even once yet). I am HOOKED, HOOKED, HOOKED on the perfumes. I've tried about 12 Imp's Ears (the tiniest little bottles of oils with helpful little wands in them, probably less than 1 ml) - hated some, loved others - in case you can't tell, I hated Rage and loved Ulalume while that Iodex one just makes me laugh. Interestingly, the perfumes change on you. I've just discovered that Shattered, which I thought smelled like rotting drainwater the first time I tried it, is a really pleasing light floral and aquatic scent that I want to buy. And apparently what smells like one thing on you will smell completely different on another person... which is giving me wicked ideas about finally putting Saurabh to good use. If he goes to work smelling like white tea, lilies, moss and sandalwood (ah, I see I have made my perfume tastes public) in the service of my own little private olafactory experiment, so be it. :)
Even more addictive than the scents, which drive you mad trying to figure out exactly what that little note of something-or-the-other in the background is, is the website itself. Is that heaven or what? It wakes up my inner Goth, it sates my hunger for all things mythological and literary, it pleasures my inner geek to a hundred little thrills. I mean, look at me, cooing about my inner Goth! I love that it's not organised in a perfectly orderly, easy-to-locate fashion. BPAL's website is Paris: it invites you come take a walk in it, discover its secrets, lose your way and just keep wandering simply to soak in the beauty all around you.
