Neither I nor our textile collection can stand much UV beaming directly into the house so this newly naked northern aspect needed something to replace the plum's generous shade.  As a bonus, I now have a place to house the cacti and aloe oveflow from elsewhere as everything gets bigger.  

​You don't really think about that as you're amassing a collection of tiny little baby plants; the Aloe alooides in the centre of the above image used to fit in the palm of my hand.  Now it could scoop the brains from ten craniums at once with its monstrous extremities, if it were so inclined.  If you want to save yourself some hard choices, be wiser than me- take a rational moment in the midst of your compulsive acquisition to wonder about ultimate sizes and where all that arrant vegetation is going to live, long-term.  

Half an acre and a knack for building awkward polycarbonate structures mean I can flip moderation the bird for a few more years.  Here are some of the fruits of those happenings.

Various Rebutias, Lobivias and Sulcorebutias.  I cannot be arsed trying to keep up with their highly mutable taxonomic nomenclature so they remain 'that purple/orange/yellow one' to me.  Most are easy to both both acquire and cultivate, so if you're looking to get into cacti, you might as well start with these guys.  The flowers are gorgeous and reliable, often repeating throughout the summer months.  The pale crustiness you see on a few is supposedly spider mite damage, but it doesn't seem to affect them too much and we are anti-spray, except in the case of losing a valuable plant I couldn't replace (it hasn't happened yet).  Mealy bugs are their worst enemies.  I squish the bigger ones with tiny twigs and blast them off with a hose or camera-blower thingy.

Metrosideros 'Springfire', a nice little hybrid (?) Pohutukawa from somewhere in the general Pacific; I can't be more specific because every single fucking nursery claims it is something different, ranging from a true dwarf species to a hybrid larger tree.  I'm not even sure this is Springfire since it seems to have lost most of its leafular waviness, but I'm enjoying the dangerous volume of that orange and the prospect of extended summer flowering.  Bellbirds skulk around it furtively, defying my presence to get at the early nectar.  We sincerely hope Myrtle Rust doesn't make it this far south and wipe out all our fantastic Myrtaceae specimens, as it has done in Australia.

Notice the ye olde wrought iron fence panel in the background- that's new too.  We bought some online a while back that looked like they were probably yoinked out of some Victorian grave somewhere and painted them up to put up along the front garden.  Hot tip: paint your rusty iron panels before you attach them to a fence over a 15 foot drop.

Sioux, Bob, Chrissy, Debbie and Viv all back in the day
I can't believe that one of Robert was 1987 ago because it feels like fucking yesterday.
See the rest here

Two birds rendered in black and chatoyant purple stood in heraldic confrontation amongst the ravished trees.  Their feet, scaled and pipe grey, cut runic prints into the snow.  Its crystals sucked a sweet and thickly-staining pink from the small carcass lying between them, of some luckless stoat or ermine; the ravens had hollowed its eyes and stolen the tongue from its mouth before opening its flank with their blade-like beaks.  Their act of disposal was ennobled by hues and textures both stiff and elastic, blue and indelicate crimson, softly furred and dripping.  All was pried apart and swallowed, the birds ignoring her observance, dragging the last secrets from between the ermine's ribs, sacred instruments about their sacred task.  When she looked up from them the ruin had retreated overhead and she could see nothing of the rooftop yard, though she frowned and squinted until the hollow beating of the ravens’ wings turned her back in their direction.  Together the corvids made a concerted ascent and stood amongst the branches, looking toward the south like sombre weathercocks and croaking brusquely.  With her eyes still on the birds she sank down, one hand seeking the strap of the rifle while its absence and the rasp of an unfamiliar tread closed her eyes.  She remained bedded like a stone even as the sounds described the stiff, braced stance the stranger assumed before her.

The sight of Susan Christabel in such incautious isolation seemed illusory to Josephine.  She blinked hard, but made no other move to reassure herself.

“Move slowly, do exactly as I say.” she called as she withdrew a heavy black pistol.  “Lace your fingers behind your head.  Lie face down.”  The girl glanced up toward the ruin.  Josephine covered her carefully as she rose to stand, charged with the bright, self-conscious rigor of refusal.  Her head turned toward the sound of the water; she looked back once at Josephine, then ran.

The dead trees of the clearing were quickly swallowed by the hillside though she did not look behind her, pushing her lead by skidding over a shallow bluff onto the more familiar ground of her previous ascent.  Her boots punched into a cracking tangle of wind-banked branches; tipped forward, she kicked free and stumbled on toward the gorge, bursting through fingerling saplings that whipped back at her face.  While her headlong velocity left Josephine in her distant wake, the latter's voice echoed down the hillside to direct another; the unseen party closed on her as they emerged together onto the level ground, catching her right arm and spinning her hard into the snow. 


​
Petrouchka suspended her careful ascent toward the yard, lifting her hand to spare her flooded gaze the daylight; though feeble and colourless, it roared and boiled around her, casting the steps in white hot relief and glowing with the infernal hue of crucible steel.  It rippled through the liquid in her eyes, her surface guarded only by clothing and the shadow she had followed from inside the ruin.  Halted by its failure at the floor of the roof she stood, awaiting Sachiin's attention.  He was tying back his returning hair, the handle of the axe propped against his thigh, and formed a pier of scalding brilliance, his eyes rendered in lustreless, infra-red darkness.

"From the way she freaked at me and peeled out, I'm guessing you dropped some epic shit down there." he suggested tersely.  Petrouchka lifted the black cloth from her shoulders over her head.  "I trusted you not to fuck with her, and you went right at it.  I trusted you not to fuck with him."   

"You accuse me?  Of what?"

"Dépravation." he replied, wearily.  "Déshonneur."  The charges carried deeply into her empty chest, the day shuddering around them in agreement; she murmured, and lifted her draped arm as much against his stare as the sky, and he spoke more gently to her.  "Do you not love me, Belyaev?  How have we sinned against you?"

"I am dead, Sachiin." she confessed from underneath her cowl.  "You ask so much of me." 

The haste with which Kala'amātya climbed toward them drew him past her with none of the inquiry her presence might have otherwise inspired.  She watched him confide something to his brother, then catch his arm as the latter broke toward the stairs, wide-eyed and silent, forcing Kala'amātya to exert the whole of his strength in halting him beside the vampyre and pinning his shoulder to the wall.

"What did you tell her?" he demanded of her.  
"Sh'ih in'nai'ama.  If they have her, they can't have you." hissed his detainer.  Their struggle escalated until Petrouchka was sucked into its throes, her two-fisted hold setting her dead weight against him.
"Sachiin!  You think she want this?  Go now, or you won't."

He dragged them from the wall with him into the sunlight, her right side bared by the loss of her shawl; she sank to her knees beside his leg and clawed it back over her head, her cry prompting him to throw his brother off and aid her, though not before the caustic sky raised plumules of flame on the backs of her hands.  Crouching in the shadow, Petrouchka pressed her burnt skin to her dress where it smoked like a brazier of blackened myrrh, uttering advice deeply coloured by the dark purl of her accent. 

"They won't give you a cage with her.  Be free.  You know there is nothing else."  

As she tottered back into the ruin Sachiin dropped onto the step beneath him as though suffering the same malaise. 



Shaw pressed the girl's shoulder to the ground with his knee while he patted his belt for the cuffs he feared lost in his acquisition of her.  Silence settled in the blue shade, the smell of stone and soil flushed from the riven snow beneath them.  She lifted her head to look at him, astonished, then incensed.

“Relax.  The less trouble you give, the less you get.” he muttered, forcing the cuff down over her wrist.
"Let me go.”  
“Can’t do that.”
"Let me go." she hissed, provoked as much by the ease of his refusal as her own predicament.  When he did not reply but sat back to consult his com, she suddenly contracted, planted her feet and threw herself sideways, tipping him onto his rear and scrambling over the top of him.  Wedging her elbows into the snow, she sprang up and ran off along the slope toward the drop, the cuff chain flapping from her arm.  Josephine leapt free from the saplings on the hill overhead and caught the fugitive from behind, seizing her hair and taking her once more to the ground.  “Get off me!” she snarled through bared teeth; in reply her captor smacked a black steel truncheon across her elbow.  The pain left her rolling and coughing snow from the back of her throat while the webbing was strapped around her right arm.  As it compressed the small bones of her wrist the girl's dark eyes flicked open; she snatched the stranger's jacket front and jerked her downward where she bit hard into her cheek, her teeth skidding, then tearing into the smooth skin.  Josephine punched her stomach with a knee until Shaw pared them apart, keeping her assailant pinned where she lay.

The blonde woman pressed a hand to the lush colour smeared across her face.  It bled through the crooks of her fingers while she tore supplies from her pack, the girl spitting its raw taste into the snow.

"I want their location." she hissed, slapping tape across the gauze that had stuck to her wound.  Susan's eyes found Shaw again.  "Where are they?" Josephine shouted down at her, fingers blanching on the handle of the baton.  Her victim's red-stained teeth flashed as she cracked the weapon across her shins; at its impact she stared wildly and gasped for breath, but uttered nothing more.  Shaw turned from her, keeping his remarks confidential.  

"This was too damn easy."
"They're here." Josephine assured him, scorn lowering her voice.
"You don't know that... you think they're just going to sit this out while you go hard on her?"
"Look at her neck.  That's a fatality right there, and there's a bad contact on her arm.  Where do you think she'd be right now if they weren't committed to her survival?"  She waited for him to conclude his incurious survey.  "Take all the time you need."
"That's not what I got at the house." he insisted.
"What you got at the house put us out here.  Now get on her.  I need bloods."  

Josephine's pack yielded a number of discreet kits, each sleeved in a different shade of green from which she slid a selection of tools and appurtenance.  With a small black camera she bent down again, grasping the girl's throat and snapping detailed shots of her face, front and profile, disregarding its expression and the blood around her mouth.  The subject lay so indifferent to the blinking shutter that Josephine began to suspect her acquiescence and stowed the camera; with a plastic bag over her hand she grasped a section of her hair, winding it around her gloved fingers and ripping it free from the braid.  

"The tent lab can get all this." Shaw muttered from his position at her feet.  The girl saw nothing of the collection tube pressed to the skin beneath her ear, its cannula drawing a snaking line of blood into the plastic. 
“She’s a warm ride, she could be holding both their DNA.  If we have to cash her in I want her swabs on file so get her fucking feet.”

Their captive twisted from the hands that grasped the front of her jeans, thrashing hard and catching Shaw in the throat with her boot when he lost control of her legs.  He sat back, struggling with the insult to his airway while Josephine cursed them both, winding the miscreant with the baton and climbing to her feet.

The conscripts negotiated the slope within formation in response to her summons, their thickset, pale-eyed uniformity suggesting them as the product of some failed fascist métier, their defects almost sarcastic.  One by one they took a moment from their slit-eyed vigilance to look the girl over, returning their interest to their surrounds as circumstance dictated the emphasis.  Their leader shrugged while shaking his head in rueful illustration of his misgivings.  Built like a massive bipedal saurian, he sported a white blond crop and eyes that seemed perpetually inflamed by some chemical irritant.

"From point... looks clean." he reported, watching Josephine consult the compass on her wrist.  Shaw shook his head at her ascending glance.

"Set up sensors... I want coverage at thirty metres." she instructed.  "We'll tune her here.  If it moves, get on it."

The conscripts spread away from them, placing laser-sighted units in a perimeter and hunkering down with their weapons to their chests.  Fighting the acquisition of her hands until she was flipped onto her stomach, the girl blew snow and loosed hair from her mouth against the ground.  Shaw stood peeling the plastic from an energy bar and planted a cursory boot on the back of her knees as per instruction; Josephine uncuffed her left fist and prised the thumb from it.  

"You can see where this is going..." the former explained to the subjugated party with his mouth half-full, favouring his bruised throat as he swallowed.  "I can't help you if you won't give back.  Anything you know is good."

Josephine unclipped a multitool from her belt, setting the deeply-cleated plier jaws around base of Susan's thumb nail.  

"Where are they?"

Her silence closed the jaws and crushed the nail frozen white, then concentric blue and red.  The girl almost tore free in the comprehensive violence of her response, writhing behind her arm with the demonic strength of some inviolate possession.  Blood fled the split that buckled open in the half moon of her nail but her expression conferred nothing beyond agony; Josephine released the jaws, knowing circulation would reprise the sanction.  In Susan's stare the looming birches came to sudden life, branches bleeding like veins of watered ink into the sky.

"Last time.  Where are they?"  Josephine's reiteration sounded as though spoken through a wall; she looked out along the slope, then selected another finger, adjusting her grip on the tool.  

The girl's eyes flew open; her teeth appeared behind her lips and Josephine loosed the jaws, then struck her dripping finger a swift blow with the tool.  Susan lapsed slackly onto the snow and away from her hand into a spinning, silvery daze while the conscripts kept their wary eyes on the hillside. 

"Down there." she gasped, spitting out the words along with the saliva that had slid into her airway.

Shaw dispatched himself down the slope and blew hard as he toiled back to them while Josephine unrolled a slim chain from her belt and dragged the girl's dead weight toward a tree, securing her to the trunk.  He took their discussion to a discreet remove.

"Like I said... tracks go right down to the drop." he smirked.  "They cut her loose."  

Around them the corps stood like some crude henge, fists closed tightly on their weapons.  

"Did I tell you to come in?" snapped Josephine, turning her attention back to Shaw's gloating reportage.  "How is it possible for her to have a hand up your ass when she's tied to a tree?  I could do her like that all day and she won't make a sound.  Ask yourself why."  

Snow had began to fall again, drifting between them, and she paused, turning to look through it at the conscripts that had begun to scratch at the edge of her attention like a hatched blur; they cringed hard and doubled over as though her anger had effected it, weapons forgotten at the cold burn of the screaming tone inside their heads.  Shaw's hands retreated to his rifle and Josephine looked down at the split ring hanging from her belt, gaping, misshapen and emptied of its orange fob.  The missing unit almost glowed in Susan's bloodied grasp as she slid her thumb back from the button, sitting on her knees in the half-regarded distance and watching the tormented men recover, her mastery of the effect becoming clear, like something patiently explained.  Looking up at the pistol in Josephine's grasp while the latter strode toward her, she hoisted her swollen elbow onto her knee and used both arms to throw the fob to Shaw.  

The men said nothing to the baton blow that knocked her onto her side.

"Get back out on point!" Josephine shouted over her shoulder.  The command met a thick, shuffling silence.  Shaw nodded toward Susan, stowing the orange unit on his own belt.

"Get her up." he told them.  "We're done wasting time."

Two conscripts lurched forward uncertainly, trudging past Josephine while she blew a dry breath at the sky.

"What now, Nathaniel?" she laughed sourly.  "Slay us with your exit strategy."

​"I...  We call this in..."  

“You don’t dial in a jugfuck, man..." A Two volunteered.  "We come up empty, they’ll frag us from the fuckin hawk.  I seen them do that shit three times.” 

"We're not empty... we got her." he reminded them, nodding to the base of the tree where Susan lay on her side.  Taking the small locator unit from her breast pocket, Josephine offered it to Shaw.  

“So call it in.  Thirty to pull pitch, two hours flight time... they'll be here before we lose the light.”  Conscious of the eyes on him, he made slow time in checking his watch and compass, setting his rifle strap across his shoulders and ignoring her demand for a decision.  "Call them." she insisted.  He turned toward his abandoned pack, speaking with her scathing stare still crawling on his profile and muttering in reply.

"I'll make the call tomorrow early.  We pitch here tonight."
​


CONTINUED NEXT WEEKISH
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

Parsons Chameleon / palm / Black Lemur
see the rest here

It is bitter-free, punching down the brilliant, UV-soaked flavours of raw citrus into a slightly caramelised gloop swimming with soft chunks of chewy, jellied, padparadscha goodness and peppery, perfumed ginger.  We both love it and it's possibly my personal all-time favourite jam.  ​You can't really fuck it up either, so feel free to have a go.

As a confirmed citrus freak, I burn my oral membranes out each and every winter, sucking down every variety I can lay my greedy paws on.  If you've never tasted a blood orange, you will possibly be surprised by the literal nature of their flesh and their lack of upfront acidity.  Their complex, dirty undertones can creep almost toward umami; they're not super-weird, but they're not for everyone.  It isn't absolutely necessary to go hunting them down for this recipe; those brilliant late winter Navels are just as good, if not better preservation prospects, due to the persistence of their high notes and clean sweetness.  I like the bloods because they're a bit exotic and the colour is more intense.

Use a sterilised ladle and/or jam funnel (just buy one goddamit) to get it into oven-sterilised jars (100 celsius for at least 10 mins including lids).  I filled 9 medium to large jars here but it varies every time, so clean more than you think you'll need.  

​Mine still slops around in the jar after a notional set, but you can boil it down to rubbery firmness; while I personally think this is gross, you're the one eating it.  We like to spoon it out and let the syrup soak into the toast while the fruit sits on top, smiling at you.  Refrigerate once opened.  Use liberally in poultry recipes, sauces and on cakes, too.

Though she had risen slowly, Susan had to stop halfway up the stairs to catch her breath, leaning over herself as she struggled with the asphyxia pursuing her amid the ascent into her throat of the contents of her stomach.  When she emerged into the clear air of the yard a distant sunrise had slid fingers of gold and ibis pink beneath the cloud sealing the valley, its light striking Sachiin's face as he looked up from cutting wood.  With Petrouchka's voice still rolling in her head like a black draught from the gorge itself she closed her eyes at the sight of him, the vampyre's gifts clasped to her chest.  He smiled and set another piece of wood upon its end.

"Hungover?"

When the inquiry was ignored he interrupted his swing and turned back to where she stood, plaster-white and breathless by the parapet, her hair confined to a strange, confluent web of braids.

"She’s underneath us...”
"Ça va, cloudcheeks?”
"Do I look like I'm alright?" she exclaimed.  "This is doing my fucking head in.  We're not staying here.”

Putting down the axe, he came to her and took the bundle from her arms, looking over the mirror in surprise before setting it down upon the row of stone; he lifted a garment from the shroud of disintegrating linen, its shattered atoms drifting around them in a haze of white while a dress fell open from his hands.  Composed of heavy lunar samite, its high-waisted bodice was densely figured with a nebula of hand-cut gems, finch-yellow and violet sapphires and rock crystal, as coldly lustrous as Olympian ichor where they were clasped to the silk by gold thread curling into buds and tendrils.  Susan closed her eyes, its cynical splendour so much more a cage than an adornment that it overwhelmed her.

"I'll have get it altered.” he lamented, regretting his flippancy at the sight of her reaction.
“If we had a toilet I would flush the fucking thing.  She doesn’t want us here, I told you... why do I have to keep saying it?  I'm not spending one more night in the same building with a... a fucking dead person, in a downward bloody spiral who lies awake at night and listens to us fucking...”
“You have to let the drama queens bust a move, Christabel... just wait til they get it out of their systems.”
“They’re not drama queens, they are psychopaths!  Psychopaths who can't stand the sight of me."  She dragged down the fabric of her collar to reveal the scars on her neck.  His eyes drifted over their ragged topography, though he knew every ridge and hollow.  “You can be as stupid you like! This is how I end up."
"I don't think staying where we..."
"You don't think, that's your fucking problem!  I can't spit the fucking bullets out, and I can't take someone else trying to kill me, Sachiin... we are going.  I'm not asking you!"

He took a slightly flattened pack of cigarettes from his pocket, holding one between his lips while he retrieved his lighter, never more aware of her gaze in spite of his deliberate silence.  

“I’ve never really done this before, so it might lack credibility." Sachiin admitted.  "But this is my foot, and it's coming down.  There's too much snow.  I’m not losing you to something as fucking stupid as hypothermia... so c’est comme ça... you'll just have to trust me.  Nowhere for a week."

She clasped her own face, everything she had stamped down in her chest emerging in tears.  He looked out over the parapet with a hand on his nape, his struggle manifesting in a deep tic that worked across his shoulders, deforming his resolve.

"You didn't hear what she was saying... for fuck's sake, what am I doing here?" she demanded of herself, sucking a broken breath through her hands.
"Christabel..." he exclaimed softly, immersed in her dismay.  "I’m saying no to you... be proud of me.”  

She struck at him as he touched her arm, turning to stride across the roof into the darkness of the ruin, snatching up one of Petrouchka's forgotten coats in the midst of tripping over its crumpled form and following the steps down to the postern door.  The effort required to heave it open checked the blurred impetus of her descent; she sank down into a crouch against the stone of the mountainside where it neighboured the weathered timbers, wiping at her eyes with her parka sleeve.  In doing so she caught sight of Kala'amātya returning from a solitary foray.  He ascended toward her slowly with no need to question the colour of her face, standing with his rifle on his shoulder while he waited for her to compose herself.    

“You hate this place as much as I do.” Susan murmured.  "And your fucking brother’s morphed into a fascist who knows what’s best for me, so can we please take him to a town where he can buy drugs and go back to being no fucking use to anyone?” 

"You'll lose too much condition trying to walk in this, and there's more to come.  Wait a week." he told her, his study of her referring him to the unspoken elements of her distress.  Looking up into his illegible features, she knew she could not command everything required to disclose Petrouchka's admission, the failure sitting like lead inside her stomach.  

"You must want shot of me more than ever."

“You could have stayed in Gévaudan.”

Susan shaded her eyes from the sky, shaking her head and expressing an arid obscenity.

"If you don't know why I didn't, I can't even feel sorry for you.”

He slid the rifle from his shoulder and made an offer of it, which she ignored until he took her wrist and pressed it into her grasp, meeting her glare without a word.  Susan threw it down onto the snow and dropped onto her backside to push off the edge of the steps, carrying on stiffly down the hill alone.  

A tumble of dry powder descended the slope with her, settling on her lashes and catching on the lush pile of the coat around her shoulders from which it shook loose, banished as it might have been from the back of an animal.  She marched on down the incline, making long bear steps that compacted the crusted snow.  It was not until she was reminded of the river by the sound of unseen water that she slowed, standing on a narrow piece of level ground and looking around herself.  Cold crept into her sleeves but made no headway against the warmth haloed about her neck and chin by the fur; the gorge accepted venous tribute from the slopes on either side of its sunken, blackened crevice and she followed the tiny streams of melt to the edge of the drop, sitting down on a drift to take in the sight of the half-buried river.  The cliff beneath her was not nearly as tall or forbidding as she had expected, its steep degree built up by enormous boulders cast from the ridges into a broken but passable grade, the great blocks ignored by the water shouldering past them, as dark as graphite in suspension.  Fine spray settled on the fur as she devised a way over the descent to a point where the river was pinched so tightly between outcropped stone that she might have leapt it; she wiped a drip from her nose, folding her arms and sitting in her hunch until the sun had shifted overhead and tipped her shadow backwards.

Susan looked to the north and south and climbed slowly from the drop on all four limbs, rising to her feet once more where the hill leveled into a broad shelf.  The air glittered with buoyant whits of ice in flues of sunlight drifting down from slim rifts in the cloud.  At first glance the trees seemed placed as though by careful hands at some considerate distance from each other, and that they cultivated sophistry, their slim shade cutting the white with stripes of matte grey, snow lying on their branches like inverted shadow.  Shrugging off her coat, she hung it from a sapling and lay down, first in profile, then on her back, imprinting two versions of herself into the pristine little plain.  Her own small scale annoyed her as it had always done, seeming closer to some minor, nameless scion of her order than the species to which she belonged, though she drew consolation from the adult nature of the impressed proportions.  A brief exam of her surrounds yielded broken wood, pebbles and bracket fungi; knocked from the fir they climbed in velveteen succession, the shapes of each were pressed into service as features on her effigies.  Crouching for a moment at their feet in the grip of a vague dissatisfaction, she leant forward and planted a cigarette in each emblematic mouth.  The effect was so displeasing that she flicked them away along with those remaining in the pack, tasting wet ash on her tongue and noting the narrow slash of red on the back of her finger before the discomfort of the scratch itself, hands almost disembodied by the cold's numbing, insidious empery.  From them she looked up through the curling tendrils that had escaped her braids, glimpsing movement flickering amid a copse of pines recently carbonized by lightning.  
​
​

CONTINUED NEXT WEEK-ISH
© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

Compassion is endlessly vigorous and incredibly forgiving of shit pruning jobs, sprouting away from all points and putting out enough slightly olive-green HT foliage to cover our worst mistakes.  Her open, upright structure makes her a great prop for the smaller clematis and honeysuckles and she won't shade out anything growing around her feet.

I make a lot of my own clothes, and as I've entered cronedom I've become much more conscious of fabric qualities over fancy construction.  Which leads one back to hand-sewing everything; the tensions generated by hand and needle yield a much better result than machine stitching natural fibre fabrics.  It's strange how the seemingly lax plain stitch holds your silk tunic and sack dresses together like no one's business, resulting in virtually zero seam pulling and holing etc.  There's also some indefinable quality in hand sewn garments; they just sit and hang better.  It's the same with natural colours over synthetic dyes.  There are quite a few shades that just die horribly when attempted with modern chemicals; apricot, red, blue-greens and purples.  Even the black that's been so treasured and ubiquitous for the last 40 or so years is really quite a horrible, revenant thing when compared to those found in vintage rugs and old school textiles.  Blacks derived from indigo are sublime in contrast.  The industrial versions may seem brighter or more stable at first, but after looking at them for more than a few moments, the eye feels tricked and assaulted.

I don't really know where I'm going with this so just watch the fucking doc.

Nars Rouge Basque (pictured) is closest by a mile, but still redder, glossier and more conventional on the lip.  Nars Golshan and Bite Beauty Crushed Chili share a chunk of its DNA but they are, again, closer to red, even if I deem them neutrals.  MAC Chili looks like Marrakesh's twin if you haven't seen the former in a while; upon comparison it's surprisingly brighter and yellower.  MAC Paramount is quite a bit darker and a definite coppery brown rather than rusty.  MAC Auburn pencil is darker and cooler.  MAC Brick pencil is far redder.  MAC Retro is oddly apposite, yielding a similarly muted, mid-tone effect from different ingredients, being cooler and more dirty-sullen-rosy, so if you can't werk Marrakesh, but are hurting for something moyen, look into that guy.  I'm really enjoying this shade and advise you to pick it up... if you can find the damn thing.  Get your shit together, MAC.