#i want AMBER i want WOODSMOKE i want PAPER i want NOTES OF LEATHER

[dieinct]

op of this post locked reblogs (valid; also doing so) but this is exactly it. i want to smell like a library mistake.

[lengthy-artery]

The Entities as Perfumes

A while ago I was talking with friends about what the various Magnus fear entities would smell like as perfumes. This is the result:

(Disclaimer: I have no idea if these will actually smell good, but if you want to try and make them I’m not going to stop you)

Eye: Dry, clear resins and incense. Old paper. Distant hints of coffee, of sleeplessness, gathering the whole scent together and bedding it down into a base of absent alertness. The eye smells like a memory of a violin bow dragging across your fingertips.

Vast: More of the ocean that you would expect. Deep marine notes hung about with salt that clings to your skin and your hair and your lungs, the tiny crystals pressing in close. Ambergris thickens it, draws the waves up to hang you, laces around your wrists and cocoons you in the oceans embrace. Eucalyptus for a memory of open sky, of the wind in silver-green branches where you cannot see the ground.

Corruption: Bitterly sharp and acidic, harsh against your sinuses. Mint to the point of overwhelming but laced through with rot and damp and sweat (spearmint, not peppermint. An important distinction). A base of tobacco twisted with almonds - not dry, not dusty, not yet wet but waiting to be. Too many cleaning products - a desire for an absolute sterility that will never come.

Spiral: Cherries, figs, overripe fruit that will burst if you look at it wrong. Bright and chaotic and playful and sugar-heavy, too sweet and too much but enthralling all the same. Woven through with roses. It dries down more powdery than you would expect - even in its patient form on your skin it is baffling.

End: More florals than you would expect. Violet and lilac and lily; the flowers of forgotten mourners who have long since found their own graves, all of them clinging close to the slow, steady pulse of clean skin musk. Not offensive. Not memorable. Not even uniquely distinct, but nevertheless inevitable. It stays close to your skin no matter how much you wash.

Hunt: Forest. Leather. Moss and pine and dark musk and black amber and traces of thick red sandalwood. A heavy scent, not twisted together but woven. The ache of your calves as you run. Stones pressing against the soles of your feet through your shoes. It slips around your skin, draws you up in the chase and then presses the clean edge of blood-red rust to your nose. This scent is tempered with iron.

Lonely: Simple, and basic, and forgettable. A plain musk. No additions. No detail. There is nothing here to convince you to stay, nothing here to draw you in, nothing but simplicity. You feel you have smelled this before, on a stranger or a friend or a family member, but you're not sure which one. Was it any of them at all? That aunt you haven't seen in years? The friend you left behind when you moved cities? You don't know. It doesn't matter. You can't remember their face. Maybe they never smelled like this at all.

Web: A citrus-leaning scent, remarkably. It draws you in to smell it, to inhale it, to press it to your skin and accept it, and then you find that you do not care for other scents so much. Once you did, but now... not so much. The amber beneath makes the scent deceptively warm but it dries down on your skin until all you can smell is cedar and lime, classic and not too distinct but still present. Grapefruit for a touch of brightness, to sway your attention. You will keep wearing this one.

Slaughter: This one fills your throat up and does not leave. It is not aggressive, not quite, but the dragon's blood and red musk make it persistent; a slow, steady march of a thousand soldiers footfalls. Patchouli and and cinnamon scream above it, fleeting and sharp, and dragged beneath it all is a layer of damp earth; the cloying mud that will never leave your nails no matter how hard you scrub.

Desolation: A delightful cacophony of clean destruction. No rage, no chaos; woodsmoke and coal that lingers above a base of rum and vanilla. Not wholly sweet; the cloves bring it an unexpected sharpness that you prick your fingers on.

Buried: Oh, but this one longs to choke you. It does not attack you the way Slaughter does, does not drain your blood and return it laced with bullet-holes, but the white musk and heavy petrichor settle in slow alongside your marrow, brushing up against your temples and over the curve of your shoulders until your back is bowed beneath their weight. Spanish moss and juniper cushion the ceaseless pressure of them but there is only so much they can do to stop the rose leaf from pressing against your palms.

Stranger: Plum and fig and white musk to beset and beguile you - you catch this scent on your best friend when you walk past them and it confuses you, if only for a moment. This is not the sort of scent they would normally wear - there is too much here that is fruity, too much here that is off. The incense that lies alongside the base is pleasant, certainly, but it cannot mask the jasmine and juniper berries that now hang about your best friends throat. They have never worn this scent before. They insist that they have. Your other friends agree, but when they nod their approval you catch hints of plum and fig and musk draped around their necks, too.

Dark: Clay on the back of your eyelids, smooth and thick and somehow reassuring. The whole scent is touched about with lavender, peculiarly, but it just serves to make the clay and opium altogether heavier in comparison, dragging the whole thing down until you can smell nothing else but a memory of what light there once was.

Flesh: There is iron here but it damn near drowns in the dragon's blood and milk that swirls around it, the blood staining the milk and the milk sapping the blood's colour until they are nothing but marbled pink and white and rich, flesh-bright red. Red and black musks suffuse the whole thing, choking out the myrrh and woods that are not yet dead.