Creeping by Daylight

[doomsday_disco]

I think that woman gets out in the daytime!

 

And I’ll tell you why—privately—I’ve seen her!

 

I can see her out of every one of my windows!

 

It is the same woman, I know, for she is always creeping, and most women do not creep by daylight.

 

I see her on that long shaded lane, creeping up and down. I see her in those dark grape arbors, creeping all around the garden.

 

I see her on that long road under the trees, creeping along, and when a carriage comes she hides under the blackberry vines.

I don’t blame her a bit. It must be very humiliating to be caught creeping by daylight!

Furtive, uncanny. Blackened blackberry bleeds onto bruised green leaves, crushed grass, and wet earth while tendrils of honeysuckle clutch and grasp at noontime shadows.

[leptonpyr]

To me this is a very strange and beautiful scent. When I first opened the bottle I was a little put off because it smells *so* strong and sharp and camphorous it's almost medicinal. I want to throw out a comparison to eucalyptus oil here, but please take that with a grain of salt because I am still a fragrance newbie and quite frankly still cannot name most of the things I smell precisely. But something magical happened when I tried it on: the sharpness dissipates a bit and it is just so intensely *green*, evoking the scent of thick wet vegetation so strongly for me, like forest undergrowth and leaf litter mixed with fresh leaves and crushed, sweet grass just after rain. The blackberry starts coming out very distinctly too, and the combination is gorgeous, hard for me to describe, but sort of thick and syrupy and a little bit sharp, almost a resinous effect? There is a tiny, tiny whiff of something faintly floral that feels to me like it's acting as an undercurrent to the blackberry specifically, it's like the suggestion of flowers, the ghost of honeysuckle (so I suppose this is the scent of honeysuckle "grasp[ing] at[...] shadows" then!). 

 

Later in the day, I noticed I was losing some of the complexity and it was becoming a much more blackberry-forward scent with just a touch of green, and I thought perhaps that was just the fragrance fading, but later still I noticed more of the vegetal/green aspects returning. I can't wait to see how this one ages as it settles, and I am strongly considering a bottle. It's dark, gorgeous, and I would recommend it if you want to feel like you are creeping through a dark, lush, rainy, possibly bewitched forest at night.

Edited Wednesday at 04:49 AM by leptonpyr

[wilhelmscream]

It smells like a freshly rained on blackberry patch. The blackberry's not too sweet, and the greenery of it all is more dominant on the skin. After about an hour, it mostly smells like dirt to me. A shadowy day in the garden.

[VioletChaos]

In the bottle, the wet greenery is the only thing present. Normally, "wetness" can be an issue for me- water notes tend to register as heavy cologne to my nose. But here, at this stage, it really smells like being outside after a rain, breathing in the damp grass and leafy trees. How lovely!

Wet on skin: as it warms up on me, the honeysuckle comes into the mix, lending a delicate-but-unmissed floral touch. The honeysuckle was one of the reasons I was eager to try this scent, so I'm glad to see it showing up now.

Dry down: finally, the blackberry joins the party! I'm relieved, as this note was the OTHER reason I was so interested in trying this scent. The grass and green are still present but the honeysuckle, if it's here at all, is so far in the background as to be just part of the atmosphere, but nothing that could be picked out of a lineup as a contributor. It's a very interesting and deeply unsettling scent, reminding me of that part of autumn when the weather has turned but tendrils of late summer continue to hang around (leaves starting to mulch, and yes, the last of the blackberries juuuust starting to turn on the bramble). 

The story on which this scent was based is a long-time favorite of mine and I think this scent beautifully captures the specificity of a gilded cage: there can be beauty, sure, but don't ever, ever forget the sinister undertow.