Mlleghoul

This is an intensely sugared cinnamon and autumn fruit compote, with a bit of brooding, jasmine-y burlesque sultriness. Big Titty Goth Girlfriend harvest spice simmer pot. Too va-va-voom to be cozy, too cozy to be moody, too moody to be come-hither. Sort of like [Mae West voice] "Come up and see me sometime," but it's ultimately an invitation to drink boozy hot cider in the dark while rubbing each other's feet and watching Over the Garden Wall on endless loop and streaming yourselves for freaky guys who are into that kinda shit.

Mooncake smells different every time I wear it, sometimes an approximation of golden syrup, sometimes a vaguely eggy center, sometimes honey's thick, golden musk. I can't speak to whether it's accurate because I might just not like mooncakes? (I also find those egg custard tarts at dim sum restaurants kinda gaggy even though everyone else seems to love them, so maybe this is a me problem.) But then I am weirdly relieved to say it settles into Victoria's Secret body spray territory. Whipped warm vanilla beaten into syrupy clouds, not exactly caramel or butterscotch adjacent, but some secret third vanilla thing, light and sweet and glazed donut-sticky, thoroughly slutty. This is what someone in a wish dot com sexy Tinkerbell costume smells like, and I mean that with complete affection. Cheap glitter and cheaper wings, body spray applied liberally in a dorm bathroom, going out to the club with lots of enthusiasm and exactly zero plan; that version of me never existed, but I was kinda jealous of her! Trashy, charming, the kind of scent that conjures nostalgia for someone else's youth. I'm genuinely fond of it. I almost want a full bottle, except it is also pretty gross.

When I first sampled Nightchild months ago, I thought it smelled like an epic ballad by a Finnish heavy metal band, all Nightwish operatic drama and intensity, soaring vocals over crushing walls of reverb and distortion, cathedral-sized forests rendered in smoke and electric guitars, everything amplified and enormous. After purchasing a full bottle, I realize it's something equally intense, but different: not operatic shrieking but guttural chanting, throat-singing incantation, Heilung summoning spirits in a clearing.

Green-earth-smoke, tangled and inseparable. Coniferous sap weeping, clinging in translucent filaments. Forest floor moss, rooty, dark, and creeping, peeled away in damp handfuls, exposing Xenolithic scars. Loamy sweetness and soil, minerals apothecary-bitter. Cedar knife-edge, incense cutting sharp, clean and cold. Herbs twisted and wrung, citrus peel, crushed pine needles, and black pepper ground fresh. Less actual smoke than the drama suggests, more breathing near where smoke was, its ghost hanging in frigid air.

A ritual performed for an audience of one. Maybe you're dreaming—the clearing, the figures circling, the intranslatable incantations carved on gold, the owl cries, the wolf howls, the gods laugh like thunder, that kind of thing. Dry ice fog rolling low across the stage floor, backlit for maximum atmosphere and vibes. Hazy incense shrouding stark forest, ancient spells you mouth without understanding, throat-singing layered with crystalline chant, the ceremony private and enormous simultaneously. You're watching from inside the dream, close enough to smell the vapor, far enough to know it's performance. The ancient forest rendered, amplified, made devotional, and only for you.

I talk a lot about grey overcast skies and thunderstorms and fog and mist and loving the glooms, but even I can appreciate an objectively beautiful day. Quercia is that day...clear clear air, clean clear water, when people say fresh air or water is sweet, this is what they mean, a sharp lucidity you can taste. Something green but not heavy, not dense forest green, lighter than that, the pale spring green of new growth and tender stems crushed underfoot releasing their watery juice. A cloudless, cool spring morning that makes you genuinely think "I am glad to be alive," the kind of day that feels like a gift you didn't ask for but accepted anyway. Dappled light pooling through ancient oak branches, the tree itself barely present except as shadow, as the reason for this filtered sun, this meadow existing in its patient protection.

Lying in the grass eye-level with buttercups and bluebells, yellow and blue blooming heads, their petals hold that papery, delicate sweetness, barely-there floral, more like the idea of flowers than their actual heavy perfume. They're good-natured about being trampled. They know they'll be growing on your grave one day, gentle and insistent, reclaiming everything with the same cheerful persistence. For five hundred years, the oak has stood watching smaller things bloom and fade and bloom again, and you're just another small thing, bright and brief and beautiful.

Studio Ghibli sunlight, that glowing animation warmth where death exists but doesn't overshadow, where graves get flowers and flowers get walked over, and it's all the same turning wheel, all the same dappled afternoon. The shadow is there - hence the coolness, the morbid turn - but that's the way of things. Just keep enjoying the flowers while you can.

The wild goddess of the hunt peeling citrus in a mossy starlit clearing, an unlit Baies candle wafting blackcurrant and dewy rose from her pocket. In another pocket (cargo pants, lots of pockets): crushed mint, pale green sparks, cold mineral facets. Retinal ghosts when you close your eyes after staring at something bright. The quality of light more than light itself. Green stems snapped, leaf sap on fingertips. Petals pressed between glass slides. Forest floor dampness clinging to knees. Atmospheric, solitary. Citrus as quartz as starshine, crystalline and remote. Grains of light-fall suspended. Psychic gossamer, sour afterimage. Florals at dawn, night's lingering chill. The moon in your mouth, its clear eye sees all.