Jo13579

As so often, Huck heard loud shouting as he strolled relaxed along the hedge. Today the report cards had been handed out, and ahead of him his friend Tom slipped through a gap in the bushes, pursued by Aunt Polly's scolding voice. From the church came loud voices and soft swathes, and so they turned the other way and ran together toward the river. They bent aside the dry branches of the juniper, and pushed the raft into the water. Tart cedar floated, and the two leaped upon the tied trunks, to push off at once from the bank, and follow the current - after the adventure. Pulled along by the sluggish drift, they had a moment's peace. As the thin wisp of consecrated smoke wafted out of the little town onto the river, the noonday sun heated the raft as well. The snot-streaked topside was dry as dust, and even the tarred ropes that connected the thin logs were beginning to secrete their own haze. Tom and Huck dangled their feet in the water, waving to a slow steamer that nevertheless passed steadily by them, and had the smoke of its chimney in their nostrils. To add to this beautiful melange, Tom drew from his pocket a small envelope-"Tabaco aromatizado con Cascarille"-which he had previously swiped from Jim, in a rare moment of inattention. The two boys were rolling two fags, and puffing the aromatic smoke out on the water, when Huck dropped the Seine, and the straw covering the dry wood of the raft caught fire. Drifting along the bank, they clung to one of the swamp cypresses. They were rare here, and actually native farther south. They pulled themselves to the shore, and put out the smoldering. The cedar was already a bit scorched, too, and they tied the raft down to retrieve it later. On their way upstream, past beautiful withered pines, they heard the scent of burning incense. The last descendants of the Sioux, or just some kids indulging in a few pennies at the crazy old man's market? They paused for a moment, but already heard the first voices echoing out of St. Petersburg, and merrily made their way home, where at least Tom got to pick up his well-deserved spanking...

Thanks to Medianus. A great fragrance, monotonously smoky, yet constantly changing in nature. Multifaceted and exciting, smoke in its most beautiful form.

For days the old hunter strode through the forest, he had not entered his little hut at the edge of the forest. For a long time they had lived there alone, he and his son, for his wife had passed away when their son was still half-grown and young in years. A fever had carried them off when once the autumn storms came early, and the relentless rain tried to whip all strength from the creatures of the plain and the woods. The boy had grown up fast. He had to, for the inhospitable loneliness of the endless taiga took a merciless and deadly toll of any who could not resist its dangers with iron. Now the old man was searching for the same, lonely and desperate, the smell of a small fire in his nose. Though long extinguished, the sharp breeze pointed him through the underbrush to where his boy, on one of his first hunts alone, seemed to have camped. He broke out into a small clearing where he could see the extinguished remains of the fire. The smell of the incense which the men of the deserts and the steppes sold annually in the little villages to the south assailed his nostrils. Softened by the wind - and yet the old man smelled that his son had accidentally dropped too much on the embers before. Not much farther he found him. Cruelly disemboweled by massive paws, the remains of his faded son lay among the grasses and bushes of the forest floor. The old man began to dig, deeper and deeper, until the roots of the larches and birches obstructed his path. He lifted the corpse, closed the young man's vacant eyes, placed a final kiss on the forehead of the bizarrely dislocated head, and clasped the tattered hands. Wrapped in his own old cloak, and with his father's bow upon his breast, he buried him. A small cross of twigs adorned the churned earth. Only now the old man collapsed on the grave, weeping and pained, drew his knife through his palm, and swore cruel vengeance on the blood seeping into the earth. He glanced about him, and immediately saw some bloody tufts of fur on the bark of a nearby tree. Bear fur. The cloying swath of incense had been his boy's undoing, the bear's paws and teeth merciless. The old man stalked off, bloodthirsty and senses sharpened. The hunter's spirit had given way to the instincts of an animal. The buzz of bees startled him. A hole in the trunk, bulging honeycombs. So much more tempting than the boy's deceptive incense. But the direction of the wind had taken the decision from the bear, the spirits of the forest sealed his son's fate. Darkness descended over the surrounding area, only the occasional glow of the moon breaking through the barren tops of the trees. A rustling, the cracking of small branches. A chalk-white beam hit the beast. With bloodshot eyes it glared at the old man. The injuries, punishments of an unjust fight, and hunger had turned Master Petz into a bloodthirsty monster. It rose up on its hind paws, raised its head, and let out an infernal roar. The old man leaned against the back of the log, letting the bear come toward him. They did not see each other, but both felt the presence of death. Cruel and unrelenting, the beasts were to clash as the old man spun from cover, stabbing desperately towards the heart. The only stab he had, for as the knife slid through the ribs, the claws tore through the man's chest. Together they fell to the ground. As the man's lungs filled with blood with each gasping breath, the warm, sweet blood of the bear flowed over him as well. The old man's beatific smile froze. Retribution.

A warm, woody scent with very nicely integrated incense. Young Hunter in calmer and better, may they both find peace anyway ;).

'All right,' thought Eugene, 'enough for today.' He stood at a loading dock, watching some figures carrying large crates onto a dodgy boat. "Look out!" he barked. One of his men had dropped a crate, and a carbine barrel flashed out. A faint metallic haze rose to his nose as warm drops of the night's summer rain pelted the earth and asphalt. A man approached him, middle American. A faint whiff of cilantro wafted from this one to him. Dinner hadn't been long, but he hadn't had time for it himself. 'Mexican would be great, if only it wasn't so late already...' - with a growling stomach, he looked towards him, raising a brow questioningly. The man pulled out an envelope, thickly stuffed. Eugene opened it, letting the green bills rush through his fingers, nodding with satisfaction. "Fits." A firm handshake, and the man was gone among the port's containers. Eugene stubbed out his menthol cigarette, turned, waved the men back. He himself walked over to his Harley, stroked the seat. Here in New Orleans, the weather was sweltering, the high-quality Soviet-style synthetic leather resistant to it. The cotton fabric was crisscrossed with thin threads of sweetish resin. It shone, soaked and sealed by the darkest patchouli oil. His black leather jacket was genuine, the leather breathing better in the warm damp, and it had to remain authentic. The twin cylinders hummed, the faint smell of burnt gasoline rising from the chrome-plated, upturned exhaust. They drove off, and as they turned off the dock toward town, they passed a small road construction site. The workers had finished work late, and the rain drizzled hissingly on the still-warm asphalt. Shortly, they saw a crosswalk in the distance. The dim yellow light of the streetlamp cast its glow on a small, old woman. Bingo night was getting late, and, glancing in the direction of the approaching motorcycles, she set foot in the street. Her little apartment was just across the street, and a dimly lit window revealed where her husband was waiting patiently for her to return home. Hopefully he hadn't fallen asleep again over the latest articles in the morning paper. Eugene raised his fist silently as they drove, the others understanding. They slowed, stopped. The light from their headlights reflected on the wet asphalt. Leisurely, the smiling old woman crossed the road while Eugene lit another of his menthol cigarettes. He too had a heart, and the soft, warm smell of his surroundings made him feel calm and content. He, too, was looking forward to his warm bed, and perhaps there was time enough to read a little story to his children.

A dull, stale afternoon. The rain has washed out all energy from it. Not a rain that brings life, that is fragrant and washes away only the inessential. A cowardly rain that does not speak, but has washed away the contours of being to a pale outlined inertia. In such an afternoon our worthy Tagonist, for sympathy to himself rather prositively portrayed than unsympathetically antagonistic, finds himself caught. As he, melancholy and resigned, is about to bid farewell to the day with the fifth chime of the bell, a small branch, broken off in the nearby woods, snaps him out of his half-sleep. He opens the window, and a young green bung jumps in. The young green bastard, a Numro who has escaped from the Nimrod, loyally crosses the room, banishes our protagonist with his forest magic, and pulls him into another world. The house and the streets disappear in the swathes that escape the lead-heavy ground after the downright charmless rain. The lethargic wet gives way to lush grass and lightly glowing chamomile, and Numro and I roll through damp lavender that the homely humidness has stripped of its dry herbaceousness. We lie on our backs, gazing up at the sky, watching the agruminal aura of the gentle sun flash through the clouds as the aromatic drops from the indument of sage run into our mouths. As we continue to careen down the meadow, the grasses grow sturdier and more tart, less caressed by stems of flowers than punctuated by trunks of mossy trees. As we crash hollow-headed against the trunks, they burst open, releasing a gush of golden, sweet resins that flow into our bodies like an electrifying current, galbanizing the bracing rushes of the ethers onto our skin. The logs have taken a few scrapes as well, and we scramble to our feet, only to sink back into the soft green bed of the forest, and fall asleep with cramped limbs in the smoky mist of the dawning forest. Our lovable protagonist is sure to open his eyes happily the next morning, even if his friend Numro was just a product of someone else's fantasies, and feast on coffee, Spüngran, and other chemicals for breakfast.

With dear thanks to Susan for the restorative hijack. My first encounter with a thoroughly green scent, and it will not have been the last - Great.

...which are actually plums, but what do you do for a mediocre alliteration. When I smelled the fragrance on the sample, it reminded me of something specific. It took me a long time to remember exactly what it was. Completely absurd, this oud scent reminded me of the taste of a certain praline, a classic confection that was already popular and widespread in the Soviet Union: a mass of dried plums and chopped walnuts covered in chocolate. Applied to the skin, the scent unfolds (Fortunately? Unfortunately?) differently.
Amidst a recounting of my grandfather's war, I set off in search of some of his uncle's old documents. At the basement stairs, I stop, look down. Darkness, illuminated after a quick flick of the switch by an old light bulb whose dim light fails to completely displace the blackness. Second door on the right, I remember, and see what I'm looking for in a corner of the room beyond. An antique secretary last oiled years ago. Its smell remains constantly undercut by the earthy, but dry, and not at all musty breath of the basement. As I fold down the countertop, I see wilted white flowers from the garden lying behind it. I start looking, and open the left of the three drawers. A few cigars lie in there, only one of them burnt at the tip, and a half-open tin of old pipe tobacco. I leave it open, and open the right-hand drawer: not much, just a dusty tin of long-expired vanilla caramels that give off a creamy, cloying scent. In the middle drawer, I finally find what I'm looking for. Next to a pipe with its head cut from guaiac, lies a folder of brittle leather, inside it several folded sheets of yellowed paper, with strange stamps on them...
Portfolio in hand, I go upstairs, leaving the dull light bulb out, eager to hear the end of the story.

Many thanks to Medianus. An interesting, in its own way incredibly harmonious fragrance, which I like very much.