Lilian opened her eyes to the sound of taps screwed tightly in the bathroom and found herself lying on her side with her head upon her arm, the morning raising gooseflesh on her shoulders.  Edward pushed a towel back over his damp hair as he returned to the bedroom.  Watching him, she stretched out beneath the black sheet slowly, then drew it from her breasts and the long, lazy curve of her hip, arranged by languor and renascent lust as she lay in an invitation that was not immediately accepted.  While he stood fastening his shirt, her knee rose and described a narrow apex, her hand sliding down over her stomach and descending between her naked thighs.  She closed her eyes; for a while, she heard nothing more from him and wondered if she were not alone, until the bedclothes creased beneath her and her ankle was encircled in a grasp that pulled her toward the end of the bed, his belt hissing faintly against the fabric of his trousers as he removed it.  Lilian rose, her lips moving against the smooth span of skin beneath his navel, so faintly scored with the ghosts of misfortune, her hands closing on his hips.  He was exclusively her own beneath his clothing, as constant as her reflection, a realm of landmarked flesh ruled by those obscure doctrines prevailing in hers; the art and warm, surpassing luxury of her mouth brought her name to his, and his hands into her pale, tangled hair, resisting for a moment the primary urge that had returned him to her.  She looked up at him, and leant back slowly on her elbows, drawing up her legs.  

“Always go to the bank smelling like the last whore you fucked.” she smiled, the final syllables sucked sharply inward as he spread her legs and applied himself to the suggestion.  Her kiss began in his mouth and descended his neck, her breath hot between her teeth as she closed them hard upon his shoulder, raising the taste of his blood from the star-shaped scar still buried in his skin.  He used his weight against her exigency, slowing her until she began to subvert the imposition, feet sliding on the sheets as she twisted beneath him.  Catching her knee, he drew it over his shoulder, delivering the unsparing emphasis that she enjoyed in silence, until it returned a half-forgotten notion.  

“I want people to look at you and know exactly how this feels."
“If anyone else knew how this felt I’d cut their throat.” he promised.
“You are this to me.” she whispered.  “If not you, then no one.”  



Susan looked up from her purse mirror, moving slowly to wipe away the lipstick she no longer favoured, aware her every movement was closely weighed by two pairs of watchful eyes and tall, attentive ears.  A slender doe and her half-grown companion nosed acorns on the lawn before her, shadowed branches figuring their mouse-brown coats in the mid-morning sun.  The pair had drifted closer during her patient vigil on the porch steps; guessing the hour, she blew a sigh that overrode the sound of Edward’s descent, starting when he walked past her in the darkness of a new suit.  The deer did not lift their heads though he stood only a few metres distant, back to them as he knotted his tie.  He wore an uncharacteristic pair of sunglasses and under their effacing influence looked so exactly like his brother that Susan was astounded that such iteration could arise from conceptive obscurity.

"Sis'thle bai'in." he said, passing the remark briefly over his shoulder to the cervine invaders, who gave over grazing and moved off through the gates toward the hillside.  Touching a hand to the shape of the knot beneath his chin, he walked to the other side of the sedan while Susan scrambled to gather her accoutrement, standing to brush off her skirt.

“William said you were going into town...” she called.  He sat down behind the wheel.  “I was wondering if I could... go with you...”  
“I don’t know when I'll be back.”
“I don’t mind... I just have to get my money out.” she assured him.  If he debated the prospect privately he gave no further sign and Susan fashioned the silence into assent, though with her hand upon the passenger door she hesitated, sinking down into the seat only when he glanced up at her from behind the glasses.  A slim black case stood in her leg well, and she set it aside carefully.

Edward drove with more circumspection than his brother, slowing at the corners rather than floating out across the last available inch of tarmac.  After William's car, the sedan's interior seemed as bland and spotless as the features of a department store mannequin.  He made two francophonic phone calls, discoursing with such uninhibited fluency that she turned to stare at his profile, startled by the softness and volubility of his voice outside the strictures of her own language.  She reached across to engage the climate control and directed a blast of warm air toward herself; he looked at her pointedly, and she murmured, switching it off.  Under any other circumstance she might have admired indifference to the tyrannous exactions of smalltalk, but his devotion to the road in the face of her difficulties extinguished all such considerations.  In search of a tissue she began to explore the blank face of the glove compartment, gently pressing and tugging the panels in an unrewarding process of elimination.  The small compliment of buttons beside it issued invitation to her thwarted fingers, but his glance deterred her, and she sat back.  The heavy car rocked slowly with the contour of the road, invoking one of the rolling bouts of nausea that had troubled her recovery.

“It's the blood loss.” Edward told her.  "Put your head between your knees."

As she leant over he looked down at the gouges on her neck where the vampyre’s fingernails had torn her skin.  They had healed well, the scars passing into the dark blue of her hair.  With her eyes closed she reviewed the fragmentary memory of his presence at the exorcism, its visuals confused by intrusive notions of his fraternal resemblance, though Susan was struck most by the intangible deficits that distinguished him from William, all that had bloomed in one and failed in the other.  She pondered them, addressing him again in her own time when she sat up.

“I thanked you, didn’t I?  For helping me, after...”  
"Yes."
“I’m so hungry, and tired, god..."  Her scrutiny earned his attention where her inquiries had not.  "I know you think I'm a gigantic idiot, but I didn't mean for the Siobhan thing to happen, if that's what you're worried about."
“I don’t believe you so unconscious of your own shortcomings that you would deliberately solicit more.” he said finally, though in her afflicted state his eschewal of the vernacular made him more difficult than ever to comprehend.  She set her elbow on the door, winding a knot into her hair as she scowled again to herself, allowing the roadside properties to pass in an autumnal blur.
"Is it me, personally?  That you don't like..."
"I don't entertain any particular sentiment toward you." he assured her.  Susan nodded to herself slowly.
"So, almost blowing my head off wasn't personal?  That Nyāti cow put you up to it, didn't she?"
"No."
"No... I'm sure it never crossed her mind." she muttered.  "So... if it's not personal, it mu..."
"From a professional perspective I could say you're everything I need to make Sachiin do whatever I want.  Is that what you wanted to hear?"
"And Lilian's not?"
"My brother labours under a number of difficulties.  His trouble with no can prove catastrophic.  There was a point when you should have said it for both of you."

She let four or five kilometres pass under the wheels before responding.

"Why help me, then?"  The colour of her eyes underscored the solemn tone of the inquiry.  "You could have just... let me go... blamed everything on Siobhan.  Why did you bother?"
"What happens under my roof is my responsibility." he replied.

She let a similar distance elapse while she explored the rationale, accepting its sincerity.  

"Edward... I hate this.  I hate pretending that's your name, I hate sneaking round the house like a complete twat trying to avoid you, and I really hate you thinking I am one, so can we just... not be so... like that?" she proposed.  "I don't entertain any sentiments toward you, either."  His use of silence caused her a small, wry smile.  “That can't be everything, surely...”
“What were you expecting?”
“More of a lecture.” 
"I can't claim to have ever taken much advice myself."  
She looked back at him from the window, tucking hair behind her ears.
"I wasn't lying about Caleb's... everyone really does think it was you."  
"I know."
"Aren't you bothered?"
"Never hand the truth to someone perfectly content with gossip." he murmured.  Its occult logic abashed the judgements she had intended.
“I don't know how you keep everything so tidy."
“Repression.  It's simple.  Hygienic."
"So you... what?  Repress everything?"  The dismay that overtook her incredulity prompted them to look away from one another, Susan almost glad of the nausea that distracted her from the idea.

C O N T I N U E D...  NEXT WEEKISH
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

Jude has a dodgy reputation; floppy, fussy, too big, too small.  I've seen it looking munted-to-indifferent despite ideal conditions (the Dunedin Bot Gardens) and sprouting happily through a shitty arid ivy hedge situation (down the road) so I just rolled the dice and planted a bush this year.  It arrived battered but is recovering well and has already favoured us with a couple of surpassingly beautiful blooms.  The smell is so far beyond delicious that I can barely find the words; soapy rose, crushed pineapple or maybe baked pear, faint musk/myrrh, sunwarmed honeysuckle with a dash of nag champa incense.  Fellow scent fiends need this rose right now.

But it looks sooo pwitty!  I know, alright?  So does methylated spirits, and you don't rub that shit on your mouth either.  I'll cop to persevering with fucking Lady Bug for far too long because well, I paid money for it.  But I hate it so much that it's going in the bin rather than being sold or swapped away.  No one deserves that.  (Did I say no one?  Silly me.)

BELOW, L 2 R: MAC Lady Bug, Chili.  Maxed out / sheered out.  Neutral afternoon daylight.

Let's move on to something more pleasant, shall we?  Chili is one of those unglamorous workhorse mattes that everyone forgets to credit when they're amending those overhyped LE shades.  Texturally it reminds me of one of the best LEs in recent times, MAC Ruffian Red.  It's massively, smoothly opaque and in fact possesses something approaching pigmentation reverse-polarity, more difficult to sheer out than to achieve full coverage.  It does this without clumping, never bleeds, wears for most of the day and ravages neither your labium superius nor inferius otis. 

BELOW L 2 R  Chantecaille Tiger Lilly, Urban Decay F-Bomb, MAC Lady Bug, Russian Red, Taupe, Chili, MAC Lipcreme in Orange.  bright warm outdoor daylight.

The warmer right-hand shades in the swatch above are really accurate while the reddish things are pulling a just wee bit pink- on my laptop monitor, anyway.  Lady Bug really is just a sheered- out Russian Red.  If you're looking for something like it, go for MAC Brave Red or the Chantecaille Lip Hydra Chic instead.  They're much nicer formulas.  I know I said I hated the Chantecaille at some point in the distant past, and I still hate the arse-numbing price tag, but I changed my mind about it on the whole, which is a bitch's prerogative.

Chili is the colour of yellow-toned brick, bright chestnut horse or fox-ginger hair, composed of medium rust brown and saffron orange in equal measures.  For a brown, it's somehow incredibly clean-looking.  Redheads, green-eyed peeps and golden-skinned lovelies should run out and buy themselves a tube, stat., because it does all of those things 100% right.  It is warmly organic and wonderfully flattering.  These orange-browns were somewhat popular in the 90s but not as thick on the ground as the red-browns (trust me, I was there), and today it looks clever and unexpected, at least in my humble opinion.  

I use Chili a lot in mixes with all those near-miss shades that I can't afford not to use.  Hot tip; know all those too-sheer/too-dolly/a bit fucked-looking corals you spent all that $$$ on (I may be projecting here)?  A smidgen of Chili can make them right.  You'll be amazed how much it improves this often wayward colour and the same goes for all those semi-unwearable fashion-bitch oranges.  I use it to tame crazy shit like MAC Morange or Lady Danger when I don't want to look like a stop sign.  To knock the ashiness out of neutrals.  For a subtle ombre with some warm reds.  Your lipstick life is not complete without it.

On the desk on the bedroom.  I rescued them from impending sun scorch yesterday when it hit a good 30ºC after a month of overcast and crisped the living shit out of everything else.  

Simply Sensational (I nearly put it down again at the nursery because of the crap name) is a nice tall glossy bush, delivering massively thick velvety blooms in a true deep red.  It is a late starter here in New Zealand, coming into flower toward early midsummer- not such a bad thing since it misses all the spring rain, and there is a modest hybrid Tea scent.  It gets two solid thumbs up.

We're about to retire to bed, possibly with ice-cream and stewed rhubarb.  No chocolate because a spliff made me eat the Lindt creme brûlée block last night in the midst of a Kath & Kim marathon.  The ghost of carbs passed will be biting my arse next week but I'm content to live in the slightly greasy and thoroughly satisfied now. 

Cheers queers; hope yours is a good one.

Or neutral to slightly warm sandy biscuit with just a tiny hint of mallow.  It resembles MAC Taupe more than anything else in this group; in reality there's about a 15% differential, with Taupe being deeper, more medium wood-brown and Pander Me being lighter and fleshier.  A fleshy, savoury caramel.  I know you can use that word salad to describe virtually any neutral lipstick, but it's so bloody mutable and lighting-dependant.  You'll just have to consult the swatches carefully and to that end I tried to be comprehensive about varying lighting scenarios.

The pic above left was taken in direct warm sunlight against weathered decking and is quite true.  The one to the right is in indoor shade and throws lighter and pinker, but this it the look you might get under say, office lighting.

Your actual lips will probably be the deciding factor as to bueno v no bueno.  Mine are dark, which is a great base for reds but makes paler product a gamble, especially ones (like this) that wander away from the range of natural lip shades.  Pander Me flirts with inadequacy when it comes to coverage on someone like me in that there is a bit of central lippage peeping through in the initial application; this tends to even out a bit with wear and warming up but I don't experience this deficit with Nars Velvet Matte neutrals like Walkyrie or Dolce Vita. 

The colour payoff is good and the texture is fine- a medium (rather than hardcore) matte that will move around enough to facilitate application and some comfort.  It does dry down to a suede finish and is not for fucked up lips; if you're suffering chapping or patchiness, Pander Me won't exactly pander to you.  Once it's settled it will make a rough mouth look like 100 miles of thirsty hell so if that's you, engage balm or just avoid altogether.

With it being probably too light to be everyday-useful for a lot of darker Indian and African complexions, we're looking at a narrow zone of suitability.  Never mind- on the right person, Pander Me is really lovely and probably the neutral or nude that many devotees of the genre have been praying for, so don't let me put you off if that's your thingy ding dingy.  Personally, I like its long-wearing, food-resistant tenacity, and its unusual tone makes it a great candidate for amending a wide range of other shades- from muting dirty reds (a look I'm really into at the moment) to pulling back too-pink pinks and screechy corals.  

I can't help but think people should be mixing their shit a bit more than they do.  Some of my best lips are a three-shade combination.

In the torpid warmth of evening, the flagged court lying before the great slouching bulk of Helaine's farmhouse seemed unaccountably expanded as Edward slid down from his horse, so accustomed was he to the sight of it under snow.  A blacksmith brought his fire-flushed face to the low door of the forge at the east of the yard, brushing the embers from his rawhide apron before emerging to take charge of the horse with all the wordless discretion required of him.  The house itself offered no visual welcome, its tar-black timbers standing upright in the ancient manner, thickly-lapped and set with rows of tiny shuttered windows, squinting in unison from all three stories, the first seeming almost pressed into the ground by the weight of the others.  The thatch had not survived the pretensions of its resident clan and had been replaced with lumpen brown tiles in the more prosperous manner, greening straw remaining only on the adjoining barn.  The little central door, barely wider than the windows with its heavy chevron paneling had been pinned open to admit the breeze into the sunless apartments beyond.  The sound of hooves in the yard summoned Agathé; murmuring, she patted down her hair and hurried back into the house.

Helaine came to the entrance in the midst of the half-frowning gravity that was her custom, clearly skeptical of the girl’s announcement.  Her dress of fitted black wool was a sombre, widowed contrast to the scandalous flamboyance of her winter attire, her fair hair drawn up in a coronal braid.  Her hands came together in an unconscious gesture of delight that was quickly dismissed, though her smile escaped the strictures of dignity, and she wore it down the steps toward him.  

“Are we in September already?”

“I regret to trouble you out of season.” Edward admitted.  Taking his arm, Helaine felt the stiff catch in his stride and released him, standing on tip toe to pull back the neck of his tunic, then letting it go with a frown.  

“But of course.” she sighed, solemn once more.

The evening was briefly admitted to her darkly-paneled chamber by the final rays of sunset, its soft gilt settling on the crimson of the counterpane.  Outside, the rose-crowded garden was barely familiar to him, the swaying green and the staring, luminous blooms dimming slowly through the open window.  When she cut his tunic from his shoulders and eased it free of him his skin glowed in answer to the fading sky, the brightest element beside the mirrored lantern that she lifted from the sill.  Helaine murmured at the sight of the misfortune that had returned him to her.  In grotesque opposition stood the broken stubs of two smooth yew bolts shot from siege bows into his left shoulder from high overhead; as thick as two fingers, they seemed curiously inert for all the force that had driven their quatrefoil heads, shafts snapped by the leg of his horse as it had shed him, forming a stubborn nexus where they crossed each other deep in his flesh.  She dried her hands, perfumed by the sharp herbs floating in the basin at her feet, and then leant over him, reckoning the intersecting passage of the wood.  Her fingers tapped at his back, seeking the peculiar, flattened sound of buried iron.

“Your corps are in Lombardy?" she asked quietly.  He nodded.  "Were there not wolves amongst them to draw these?  Where is your brother?”
“Sachiin bade me bring them to you.” he admitted.  She concluded her exam and sat down on a stool, considering his condition gravely.
“Rest first.  If I am to do this, you will feel it.”  That he was weary from both his wounds and journey was only dimly apparent in the indifference with which he greeted the news; the sight of her doe-soft skin through her shift in the low, square neck of her dress, and the down on her arms where she had rolled back its sleeves added the darker ache of longing to the pain of his injuries.  
“I cannot rest as I am.” he sighed.  

Both novice girls hove through the door bearing the tools she had sent them after; the heavy smith’s tongs and butchering blades, and a basket of smaller appurtenance.  Helaine dismissed them when they had lain the implements out on the bed and fallen to staring at his condition.  Their disappointment at their exclusion lingered after their departure.

She found the slim junction between two plates of bone armouring his back and marked the place with a thin stroke of kohl, then sat back down on the stool, selecting a knife and trimming the ragged end of the lowest shaft, brushing away the splinters.

"Try to be still.”  Helaine set a smooth, doweled length of chestnut to the end of the shaft and chose a heavy mallet, allowed him time to compose himself, and then struck quickly, driving the dowel deep into the wound after the retreating bolt.  Rising to glance over his shoulder, she corrected her aim and struck the dowel three times more, directing the pointed head between the intervening bone and watching it break through the skin of his back, where she drew it out with forge tongs, their grip skidding along the buried wood. 

“How are the fields?” he asked, closing his eyes and propping his elbow on his knee as he recovered, watching her drop the broken bolt into the basin.
“They were planted, but I can find no hands, and the swine root in the barley.  More than that I cannot tell you.”  The relief allowed him to settle a little more easily while she stood between his leg and the down-stuffed mattress, rehearsing a succession of holds upon the object remaining in his shoulder with the cumbersome tongs.  “You will come north for the trouble in Vienna?”
“I fear so.  We are poorly supplied.”
"Kneel.” she told him, giving him a cup of bitter liquor and waiting while he drank it.  He let himself down onto the floorboards before her.
“I do not mean to grieve you by serving so long.”
“I do not believe you know how to live with another for the whole of a year.”
“No one has ever desired such a thing of me.”
“I have desired it.” she assured him, resignation dulling its reproach.  “But I see now that you do not enjoy me as I do you, and such things will be, if I abide or do not abide them.”  The knife blade cut down through his skin on either side of the embedded wood, creating an extra inch of purchase in the knowledge that he would not object to the expedient.  She set the tongs, clamping their jaws into the yew with both fists.  

“How did you come to this wisdom?”

Helaine glanced down at his inquiring gaze.

“You are an excellent tutor.  Once I begin I should not stop... if you cannot bear it you must tell me.” she advised.  

With all the strength in both arms she dragged the buried shaft backward through his flesh against the direction of its barbed head, expressing her disgust as it caught on the bone spanning his shoulder and refused her.  She changed her grasp and made another attempt, twisting it sideways until he stayed her and leant against the wall with his eyes closed.  Her hand found his forehead and stroked it slowly, and his own closed on the fabric of her skirt, finding obscure solace.  When she had amended the angle of extraction the bolt tore quickly free, its departure leaving a star-shaped hollow in his skin that closed with the movement of his arm.  

The peace that returned was felt by them both, lying as cool as melt water in the darkness, the candle burning low inside the silvered glass, the sound of her black silk slippers on the boards as she cleared the tools from the quilt as much comfort to him as any articulate consolation.  A tall ewer of painted tin stood on the far side of the bed, filled with a great sheaf of cloud-white roses.  

“Lie quietly." she sighed, drawing back the bedclothes for him.  "You will be well enough to vanish in the morning.”  Emptying the basin from the window, she left him alone.  

An hour of her absence passed unmarked into another, her chamber standing around him in implacable witness.  A clean shift hung airing by the door, the thin garment moved now and then by the breeze that encircled the room.  The bed held the scent of her skin, and he lay a hand on the side that she favoured, the memory of her slow breathing, her body lying by his own tormenting his injury with the unfailing desire that arose from any such thought of her.  He rolled slowly onto his side, found no relief, and sat back again, staring at the dour oak and cursing the house's thickly-partitioned scale for keeping all sound and knowledge of her private, as though in active conspiracy.  The suggestion of darkness was replaced by its reality with the approach of midnight, the proud basso calls of the owls that quartered the woods drifting in over the sill with the lingering smell of the forge, a thin ribbon of steam still ghosting from its doused furnace.  In the rooms below his own, Adelle and Agathé offered chanted prayers to the deities and elements invoked in the course of the vernal cycle, striking bells, lighting little pressed cakes of cedar dust and rose oil, and offering blood from holes stabbed into the heels of their palms.

Edward set his feet upon the boards at the side of the bed, looking down to see the small Melas rug that he had given her laid out beneath them.  Behind the bedside cabinet he glimpsed the toes of a pair of boots, and lifted the cloth laid over them against the dust; they had been commissioned to satisfy the eccentric requirements of his own physiology and executed with the exquisite, almost pitiful care demanded by Helaine’s patronage.  

He found her seated at the table in the midst of the dining hall occupying the rear third of the ground floor, her face and neck overpainted by the colours of the candle lamp beside her book.  Her lonely station and the dullness of the text had worked together, as she had hoped, to tire her.  Edward sat slowly and set the boots on the table between them.  Still nursing his shoulder, he reached across for the slender pipe that she had left at her elbow amid the soigné lacquer suite to which it belonged.  The act brought her gaze to him; she took it back and tipped its brittle ash into the bowl beside the lamp, tempering a new bead of tar before returning the loaded implement.

“The time we lose is lost to us both.” she told him, resting her chin on her hand.  “I have no thousand years to wait for you, nor have I words to slow or speed the days.  They bleed from me when you are gone... one evening, sooner than you imagine, you shall come from Lombardy, or Paris or Navarre, and find no one to meet you.”  The sight of the boots drew her hand to them, and she slid them toward herself, blowing off the dust they had collected in awaiting him.  “I thought if you were to wear these, the christians would believe you were saved, and not guess that they were meant to tread them under.”  

He smiled at her saturnine rationale.

“A week in them and I will be too lame to leave in any case.”

“Stay with me, Kala'amātya.  I will not ask again.  What do you say?”

C O N T I N U E D...  N E X T W E E K I S H.
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

^  Mary Rose, another good Austin and another superstar that seems to be taken for granted.  I find her incredibly beguiling; she's one of the first modern roses to go balls-out with the flowers and their musky myrrh scent drifts over half the garden on a still day.  There is something very romantic about her blousy, whorish profusion.

ABOVE RIGHT  Ellen, a nice, if slightly gangly, Austin with a rich fruit/soap scent

< Evelyn, another Austin stunner.  The scent is definitive expensive rose soap.

And finally bellow, some oldies and goodies.  

BELOW LEFT  The venerable Bourbon climber Zéphirine Drouhin.  Divine perfume, happy in a shitty dry position and yields a nonstop profusion of slightly unsophisticated lolly-coloured blooms.  All this rain's given it a bit of black spot, but nothing major and she's chugging along nicely.  A quick fix for an ugly corner.  Highly recommended for the doofus/novice grower.  
BELOW RIGHT  The eternal Rose de Rescht.  Elegant emerald-green bulletproof bush topped with a frilly float of glowing magenta goodness.  Highly scented, another forgiving candidate for the beginner.

Ever wondered how a violent hypermilitarised establishment plans to deal with all those annoying h8rs and their peaceful desires for social and environmental change?  We do too!  Luckily, they've pretty much spelled it out for us in tone-deaf capslock, as Nafeez Ahmed reports in this Guardian piece.  It's every bit as awesome as you probably anticipated and makes a great heartwarming xmas read.  

The military: putting the fuck (and tard) in fucktard since 10 000 BP.

The coffee machine refused Susan with a parched and gurgling complaint despite the vehemence of the curses she addressed to it.  She looked around for a clue to its sudden malaise, pushing back the sleeves of her nightgown and scratching at her neck.  The box of drinking chocolate that she guddled from the confusion of noodles and pasta at the back of the cupboards proved virtually empty and she swore again, tipping the crumbs into her mug and heaving open the refrigerator.  The milk carton stood in a similar state of denudation.  Behind her, shadow stroked across the gingham curtains from the night outside, rain hissing on the glass at the behest of a sudden burst of wind.  She walked into the entrance hall, stood listening for a moment, then turned her ear against the door, striving to decide if there was a presence in the porch until the handle moved and opened against her.  

"Ms Christabel." said Shaw, pushing back the grey hood of his sweater.  "You don't mind, do you?  It's coming down pretty hard out there."  He smiled at her visible dismay, following her into the kitchen where he occupied the doorway, leaning against the frame and blowing the steam from his flask of coffee.  Rain had painted brief, almost digital falls of darkness across his shoulders though the rest of his clothing was largely untouched by the downpour.  "That damn thing..." he added, shaking his head at the coffee machine.  "Let me look at it..."

"I can sort it." Susan muttered, pulling the hood from the appliance herself and standing on tip toe to peer inside.  She glanced back at him over her shoulder when he advanced despite her assurance, and he returned to the doorway.

"Sure not much of a night out there.  That driveway's going to ice up pretty good in a month or so... hope they get some grit out here.  I don't want to leave my ride out on the street when the snow hits."  His observations redoubled her annoyance as she discovered the reservoir tube stood disarticulated, unscrewed from the base of the steam wand.  "Thought about catching a movie tomorrow... want a ride into town?  I'm just down the road and I could use..."
"I can't.  We're busy tomorrow."
"Stepping out with Mr Lamb junior?  You two seem pretty tight lately..."  Susan looked back again at his knowing smile, slapping the cupboards closed overhead.  "Where you headed?"

"Where are we headed?" she iterated, scowling up at him when he did not oblige her approach to the door.
"Did it come out like that?  I'm just trying to make nice.."  She tried to press past him; Shaw put out an arm and stayed her.  "Hey, that's new." he exclaimed, tapping at the site of her scars on his own neck.  "Did that happen here?"  His scrutiny became more acute.  "Come on, you can't tell me this was nothing... you should talk to someone."
"Will you get out of my way, please?" she told him, turning sideways to shove past him.

The same rain lashed the tall panes that lined the studio, drumming on the roof, spewing in freshets from the broken guttering and gouging at the ground below.  The lengthy chamber was perfumed by precious woods, polish and storage dust, and Edward stood, looking down at the scabbard in his hands, its dark, discreet lacquer sheathing the last odachi in his possession.  His protracted reach allowed him to remove the blade from its housing unaided, a smooth, dry shucking sound attending its removal; he lay it across his palm, frowning down at the nicks and gouges marring its edge, though the steel still bore the lustrous damascene grain of its painstaking assembly.  It predated the zenith of the swordsmith’s art, its imperfection a brittle, unforgiving thing that he had always exploited, keeping his proficiency in spite of it.  

The last of the oxblood bags hung from the ceiling; the web of tendons in his left hand contracted, pulling tight as he closed his fingers on the clothbound hilt.  Performing no guard or formal posture, he set off in the midst of his purpose, blade blinking with the colour of the ceiling as he whipped it backward and swung its length through the bag; the lower half fell with a short thud to the boards, cleanly severed, the impact bleeding through his feet as though he had stamped them hard.  Lilian's scent drifted past him as he sheathed the blade, a sweet guest amid the notes crowding the studio.  She stood, tying a black robe about her waist while he replaced the weapon on one of the cabinets earmarked for sale.  A mass of furniture and objet lined the window-bearing wall, its diverse shapes and surfaces exaggerating the distance between them.  

“That was hot." she said quietly.  "You should have come got me.”

“I hack alone.” he replied.  Lilian looked around herself and chose the carver he had taken from his room, sitting down slowly and casting her speculation over their belongings before turning it on him.  Her scrutiny met little resistance; he took a chair for himself from the wall.  

“First time you brought me here, know what I thought?” she asked.
“No.” he admitted. 
“That you were a bad trick.”  The polished floor reflected her as she reached up and lifted her silver hair from her neck with both hands, twisting it into a knot upon her head.  
“And yet my money was as good as anyone’s.”
“Sure it was.  You were the first guy I wanted to see naked since I was eighteen.  That, and you were double tapping Orb's ass, right there in your head...”
“I don’t remember.”
She made a small, exculpatory gesture.
“You probably don’t even know you’re doing it.”

Edward turned his hand over on the arm of his chair and opened it slowly, in an invitation she obliged in her own partial, ambiguous manner, easing herself onto her feet and walking toward him alongside the consigned effects, pausing to examine their components.  

“Can’t believe I ever got in your car.” she said, almost to herself, fingers moving over the busy grain of an old coffer.
“You must be sorry you did.”  
“I’m saying it was fucked up... I’m not saying I regret it.  Jesus, you’re so fucking literal.”  His hand renewed its gesture of demand; she moved closer still, examining a low bronze censer.  “Do I look like her?” she asked, surprising him with the question.  He took some small time to himself.  
“Yes, and no.  You seem younger... everyone does today.”
“How old was she?”
“Thirty-eight when she died.”  

Her expression altered slightly as she nodded.

“How are we the same?”

Edward closed his eyes.

“Your voice.  And your skin." 
“Did you love her?” 
“More than I thought possible.” he replied, watching her struggle with his responses.  
“I guess... what I want to hear is that, whatever happened, it was worth the stitches...” Lilian admitted.  "That you made each other happy."

“I'm happy now.”  Her glance was heavily shaded with disbelief.  “I'm perverse...” he reminded her.  “It has its moments.”  Watching him say the word led her to ponder his facility across that involuted spectrum, her compulsive taste for it and her own fatalistic discipline, the prospect of confining herself once more within detachment awaiting his absence like a jailer.  He spoke her name; the approach of someone along the hall outside made him defer the question, though it longed for her.  They looked together toward Susan, who felt the heat of unwitting intrusion, remaining in the doorway until Lilian created a small, makeshift distance between them, turning to two paintings propped alongside one another at her right and lighting a cigarette as she considered them.

“Flicking both?” she asked.
“I don’t know yet.” said Edward.  “Some things you can’t give up, no matter what you tell yourself.”  
“Everything gets old... just give it time.” she sighed.  “Personally, I got a hard on for the Delacroix.  Who doesn't love a lion beating up a fucking jaguar?”  
"Leopard.  New World felidae were entirely absent from the Rive Gauche during the period in question."  Susan rolled her eyes, and Lilian directed a mocking look at her. 
“Are you accusing my associate of being a humourless freak?” she smirked.

“I’m not saying anything.” Susan promised, venturing toward them despite the lingering atmosphere that prevailed.  Their possessions were laid out in careless, barbaric splendour, like a three-dimensional Lascaux, a panorama of lavish, orphaned beauty and disordered ornamentation, randomized by its loss of context; though she had seen many of the pieces about the house, Susan found herself gazing on them with new eyes, recognizing qualities previously disguised by domesticity.  

"What's happened?" Edward asked her from his chair.  She was reminded of Shaw, and startled to think his importuning might have told upon her features, but shook her head.  Behind them William dragged a half-rolled rug into the studio, his arms stuffed with artifacts chosen from his own rooms; beside Edward’s already substantial body of selected pieces he deposited fragments of Parthian gold in a plastic shopping bag, a cigar box stuffed with uncut sapphires and a smoothly planate Olmec mask of mottled olive jadite.  He and Lilian glanced briefly at, then away from each other, their silence persisting.  Susan glanced at him pointedly as he reached back and switched on a half-dead bank of lights.

“That’s white man’s electricity.” Lilian observed.  William smiled.
“Tell him to come and get his women next time you see him.” he replied, his vulgarity drawing both of their disapprobation.  “They’re wearing down my best inch.”  He sat in the vacated chair and patted a knee for each female companion, lighting a cigarette when the invitation was refused and glancing over his shoulder at Susan departing the studio.  "That's my fucking Delacroix.”
"Auberjonois is late." Edward muttered.
"Eight's alujha for nine forty-seven.  Okay, so, town meeting." William proposed, clicking his fingers in a desultory call to order upon Susan’s return.  "When all this shit is gone we'll have some liquide, but then... what?  Then we should g... g... starts with g, say it with me..." 
"We should leave." said Edward.  
"I was looking for get the fuck out of here, but I'll take that.  I'm not waiting around for whatever found Cay and Annick to kick our fucking door down."
"And go where?" Susan demanded, chewing on the corner of her thumb.  He shrugged.

"Mmm... let's just peel out and decide where afterwards.  But hey, we've got our very own sinister self-appointed egomaniac in charge and it's traditional to dignify that shit with some sort of sham election, so all in favour of bugging out, in principle, hands up.”  He raised his own, as did Susan and Lilian.  While he spoke, a well of diminutive darkness gathered in the doorway, Petrouchka standing before the Delacroix in a black dress with her hand touching her chin, gaze rising from it to the rain that still threw itself against the windows.  “What do you want to do, Pet?  Coming with us?” William inquired.  The vampyre avoided Lilian with great decorum, alighting on the arm of his chair.

“Is kind, darlink, but I go with Gideon.  He have aeroplane, so... is good for me.  You, Susan?  What do you do?”
“Going with him.” she sighed.
“She needs some reliable heat.” William told his brother.  
“No!  I don’t want to be a stupid macho gun toting arsehole...” she complained, perceiving just as rapidly that she had lain the unflattering designation upon the bulk of her companions, and that they looked back at her in silence. 
“Ever hear about the awesomeness of being a live gun toting arsehole instead of a corpse with a really clear conscience?” William inquired, watching her walk to the calamander table behind the painting and draw her Mughul pendant from the pocket of her robe.  “Christabel... no no no... qu'est-ce que tu fous?” he exclaimed, leaning out to catch the chain and stuff it back into her hands; she fended him off and replaced it on the table.
“I’m not going anywhere if I can’t pay my way.  If you touch it, I will flush it down the toilet.” 

“I’ve got maybe three K left.” Lilian said slowly as she blew the dust from the blue gems William had purveyed, the ragged stones rolling in their bed of cigarette paper.

“Your money’s no good here, sugartits.  You paid the rent the hard way.” he smiled to her look of displeasure.  
“These are fucking primo.  I know a guy who’ll like them.” 
“They need to er... stay low profile.”
“I get that they didn’t fly out of your asshole to the sound of fucking trumpets.  Do you want me to call him or not?”

Susan watched Edward devote his unqualified attention to Lilian and wondered how they could have immersed themselves in one another to such an extent without satisfying the directive impulse.  Something even more elemental than desire altered the colour of his eyes and kept him silent, even when she looked up and saw it in him, their shared privilege requiring nothing more explicit.  His phone buzzed in his pocket and he stood, leaving the ballroom to attend to the call; in his absence, William stretched out a leg and gently kicked Lilian’s calf.  She looked to him but did not speak, and he shook his head to himself.  

“Go with him, Frost.  Who else’ll duct tape you to a clothesline and paint you with Tabasco sauce?  You were lucky to find someone who shares your interests.”
“Some day my prince will come.” she murmured.  “Maybe he won’t be twitchy or foreign, but I guess he’ll be fucking human.  What's more important?”  She looked up from her own flattened affect to the morbid exclusivity of Petrouchka’s stare, glad of Edward’s return.
“I’ll dismiss the guard in the next few days... say nothing to him.” he told them.  Susan looked up as though she might speak, but remained quiet.  
“Put it back.” she insisted instead, perceiving the absence of her pendant upon the table; William offered her an expression that might have convinced anyone else of his innocence, letting his head fall back in dramatic concession when she persisted, allowing her to drag the secreted jewel out of his pocket.  
"What the fuck kind of time do you call this?" he demanded of Gideon, the latter admitting himself with a smile that he passed around the room, sustaining it even at the sight of Lilian, though she gave him visible pause.  

"Embouteillage." he explained with a shrug, taking out his phone to briskly photograph the larger pieces and tallying their wholesale value.  "Edward, the Ziegler Mahal... you don't want to wait for Sotherby's?  This size, it has done very well..."
"Now is better." Edward replied.
"For us both." he smiled, making notes.  He made further inquiries regarding several of the more obscure items before pushing his pencil through the gold chain and lifting the pendant slowly, setting the loupe from his pocket to his right eye to read the elegant inscription faintly etched into the reverse.  "Êtes-vous sûr?" he inquired, looking to William almost warily.
"Do you think you'll get anything for it?" asked Susan, slightly discomforted by Gideon's expression.
"Un peu." he smiled, obscurely.  "Edward..." he continued, shaking his head briefly at the unaccustomed and entirely inapposite honorific as he walked back toward him.  "Per'aps you can settle something for me... you have seen these?"  Accepting his phone, Edward looked through the images of the hahdri massacre as though they were holiday snapshots, Susan watching their dark, bruised hues projected over the gold of his eyes.  "What, ah, does this look like, to you?"
"Lacklustre grouping."  
"You don't know who?"
"AP, seven six two, spent flares... governmental." Edward related.  Lilian ran a hand up the bare length of her neck while he spoke, the small moment of intimate self-contact drawing his gaze; Gideon frowned, awaiting the remainder of his conclusion while she passed behind Petrouchka and disappeared into the hall.  Edward returned his phone, remaining until the necessary will began to fail him.

"Per'aps we should all go blonde." Gideon remarked as their host left them.  "I think his queue put you in charge, Sachiin, so... voilá, my offer."  He tore a leaf from his note pad and handed it to William, who screwed it into a ball and leveled a critical gaze at his companion.
"Monsieur hermétique... constipé du morlingue." he mused. 
"Trés diplomatique." 
"Don't be so fucking tight.  You're choking the moths."  
"Another ten, that is all I can do.  Ça va?"
"Another fifteen and I'll blow you in the garage."
"Ten it is." Gideon smiled, taking his chequebook from his pocket.
"I said cash, damn you."
"You say a lot of things, chouchou."  The visitor smiled again and handed William a note on his way out.  “Be happy.” he urged.  “Now you can buy her some good taste in men.  Ladies... bon nuit, eh?"
"Mes couilles sur ton nez." William called after him.

“Do you have no clue where we’re going?” Susan sighed as he closed the door.
“I go where I’m told, cloudcheeks.  Mr Itinerary just put up the do not disturb sign, so I wouldn’t count on getting anything out of him for twelve hours.”

“Anyway, you can not always know.” Petrouchka observed.  “You think, I am going to this place, but, something happen, and then you are in the Ukraine on farm with chicken, and there is no Paris.  Sometimes is five star, sometimes goat barn... sometime no barn.  These day, if you want to be free, you must go where no one else want.”

“Aren't we there already?" Susan smiled.  "At least tell me when we’re leaving.” she added, shrugging her shoulders suddenly as William traced the back of her knees with his fingers from his seat in the chair.

“Ed’s got stuff to choke off downtown, so I’d say we’ve got another week."

C O N T I N U E D...  S O O N I S H.
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

I know I said I was going to GTFO of here for xmas, but I have to share this with you as a RFG (Recovering Fat Goth).

Yes, 20 years of darksided indolence will blow you up like a big fucking squeaky balloon (even the skinny ones HA HA HA HA!), and yes, there are a whole bunch of other vintage weirdos out there sweating off those historic fun times just like I did (and still am).  Who knew?

Although if you're werqing your thick shit to fucking NIN, you still suck, no matter what your BMI.  


Enjoy this silly NYT piece.  

You may know I don't do paid reviews, or sleazy plugs for services I don't use myself, so this recommendation is neither of those things.  If you're a Noo Zulland punter in the market for some of the best slap life has to offer, let me put you on to my main lipstick pimp, Shezza, and her new site Verily.co.nz. 

Because: she has a superpower and that is getting that MAC LE item before that SOLD OUT sign goes up.  For real.  And she passes that goodness on to us at roughly retail price (here in NZ), which is next-level ka pai.  I can't tell you how many times Shezza has accommodated my vacillation about this or that shade and then gotten me almost every limited edition and Pro-store goody my little cakefaced heart desired.

Shezza is an independent babe offering top-notch gear from MAC, Stila, Lorac, UD, Tarte, Too-Faced, Kat Von D etc etc, regular as well as LE stuff.  Let's question her further.  She speaks in pink.

Favourite makeup item of all time and why?  
Foundation primer, it makes such a difference, I use to get so frustrated with my foundations creasing and caking on my combination skin type.  I totally agree.  Get the right one and you're set for life, even if you are a shiny nose clown like moi.

What made you decide to undertake this little venture?
After doing a lot of research into the makeup industry, I realised that there were so many American products that weren't available to the NZ market, or if you did manage to find it in NZ it was usually far too expensive or fake! So I set out to offer the freshest (I'm not into buying 'last season's' stock), most highly sought after, 100% authentic American products, and to offer them at the best possible price.  I don't know about elsewhere on the planet, but I agree that it's wall to wall Chinese fakes down here on auction sites etc.  No bueno.  And trying to score LE MAC from their official sites?  Not going to happen for most mortals. 

What can people expect from Verily and precisely why are you the best darn reseller in NZ? 
Top quality, 100% authentic American makeup, and you will receive top notch customer service. I'll always try to be offering the latest and greatest products.

Worst/most disappointing/overhyped makeup product you've used? 
Gosh, I can't really think of one particular makeup product that I've been really disappointed with. But, I could just about list a million hair, skincare & self-tanning products that have been an absolute joke, and a complete waste of money!  Shezza, you're far too diplomatic!  I'll name and shame something that sucks right now- OCC Lip Tar Super NSFW :(  I'd rather rub my lips on an actual cat's bum than bother with that overhyped crap again!

The Unicorn God of Unlimited Beauty has singled you out for special treatment and you can choose any face on the planet from any time in history, the only condition being that you MUST choose someone else's thereby eliminating the boring option of just sticking with your own for the sake of political correctness.  Who's face would you go for, Shezza?  Choose wisely- it's not reversible. 
It would have to be Angelina Jolie, she is stunning!  I'd be happy with Monica Belluci myself.

Are you sending overseas at this point or will that come later? 
No not at this point, but that could change a bit later down the track.

I don't know about you, but 2014 has been a pretty tectonic year for me. For all sorts of reasons.  And I'm a bit tapped-out.  So we're going to take a sort-of- blog hiatus over xmas and into January.

There might still be weekly-ish drops, but they'll be far more visual than textual (don't you dare bust out the fucking Cristal.)  So feel free to keep checking back, especially if you're looking for eye candy to offset the prospect of forced mingling and carb bloat. 

I think I'll still run the serialization though it may be at increased intervals, just because I hate the look of them crammed too closely on one page.  And you know, you could always buy the book.  Seriously, it's no fucking money at all and a fair day's pay for a day's work would be awesome if you can manage it.  This site costs us money and we don't throw ads at you, so yeah- you know what to do.  Ho ho ho.

There's a few odds and end to post this week so I'll get those out, mainly lipstick because fuck xmas.

Thanks constant readers, peace be to ye.

Let's have some oh... I dunno.  Interpol.  My Blue Supreme.  I haven't heard the latest album yet.  The last one made me nervous.    EDIT:  Got it yesterday and it's fucking great with an Interpol factor of +/- 72837465354292 so check it out.

Charismatic (Lustre) is medium neutral terracotta with quite a lot of gold shimmer on the lip (much more so than in the swatches); I would describe the gold pigment as almost frosty rather than glittery although the effect is quite subtle and doesn't distress a frost-phobe such as myself.  The gloss isn't insane and remains relatively flattering, especially on lips that are already plump.  Not sure it would be so kind to a thinner mouth, though.

Made To Order (LE, Lustre) is a warm, translucent dried apricot shade that has some sort of distant coral affinity going on if you know what I mean.  It is pretty darn glossy, will settle into lip creases, contains a tiny amount of gold microglitter and offers a whole five minutes of wear unless you take remedial action with a pencil or base, but on the upside, it's soft and immensely comfortable for the nanosecond that it sticks around on the lips.  I mixed it with the recent Ablaze pencil and make a really pretty, slightly off-kilter coral.  Made To Order is probably most delightful on a yellow-based, lightly tanned or Asian complexions.  I'm pasty, and it was just a bit meh on moi. 

Personally I find it a wee bit tame, preferring true reds, but I should probably just shut my cakehole since Fresh Moroccan has a lot going for it outside the notes I choose to hump.  For a start, it's one of the more dramatic and long-wearing frosts with decent (around 85%) opacity.  Anyone with a deeper tanned, African or darker Indian complexion looking for a hotter-than-average neutral-with-a-twist who isn't already on to it should definitely check it out; FM is awesomely buildable- safe for work worn sheer and glam enough for sexy times when slapped on hard.  It plays really, really well with other products and I enjoyed it most mixed with Brick lip pencil.  It also approaches some of the mattes as far as wear goes- I got around 4 hours without retouching.  The only bad thing about Fresh Moroccan is my attitude toward it, lol.  So don't listen to me.  You probably do need it in your life.

end of the tunnel
Alex Schaefer

Tilde brushed the blankets on his bed with a rustling sprig of sage and shook it toward the south, while William sat hunched over his legs, sloe eyes reading the creases in the witch’s face as the latter withdrew from her inspection of the patient.  Reaching past him, she glanced behind the curtains at the morning that still glistened with the dew arrayed the night before.

“You say four days, and no sign?” she asked.

“Nothing.” he assured her.  She shrugged and clapped her calloused hands together softly.

“If she was to turn, should it be from being bitten by this wickedness outside your door?”  She let him plead silently with her for a moment longer as part of the penitence she considered due.  “But you are lucky, child... I think you will keep her.” the witch pronounced with a gap-tooth smile.  He whispered to himself and rested his head on his arms.  “Someone has chase this evil out of her for you.  And that is dralna handwork.”

“You’re one hundred percent sure she’s going to be alright?”

Tilde shrugged again, gathered up the hem of her purple, braid-trimmed dress and worked her feet back down into her sandals.

“Ja, well, put her in the sun and you will know.  I think she will be good... that is my word on it.”  She reached out and patted his face, smiling back down at the figure beneath the bedclothes.  "Such a lovely girl, so strong and blooming... a shame you won't make her fat and happy on a farm with pretty babies."
"I know, alright?  I'm a worthless incubus... might as well be a vampyre myself..." he sighed dramatically, to which the witch rolled her eyes.
"Chocolate, milk with honey, and gravlax with juniper.  You feed this to her, and pancakes.  Honest food.  Don’t turn your nose or I will come back here and make you eat it.  And keep her away from your brother... when we are healing, we don't need his sort of energy.”
"He's the one who helped her."
"Hm!" she murmured, patting the top of her own head.  "I suppose we all must begin somewhere."

Beneath the blankets Susan listened to the witch lead William into the hallway, rolling over onto her back with the caution previously instructed by her wounds, still troubled by the ghostly delay between her own commands and the faltering obedience they exacted, as though she floated in her own flesh.  The bandage taped to her neck and shoulder tugged her skin but there was nothing of the drumming pain that had woken her the day before.  She lay still, her idea of the bed as a land of insulated absolution blackened by thoughts of confinement to that very state, prompting her to throw back the covers with both hands.

Edward’s gaze awaited her as she burst into his suite and though he stood before the bed with a newspaper in both hands Susan lunged at him from beneath a cashmere blanket and secured his arm, hauling him down the stairs and slowing only in the grip of vertigo, reliant upon fervour to deliver them to her intended destination.  She marched out into the bright morning and stood staring about herself from beneath her cowl; the cold ground under her bare feet made her wince in its shelter, the weave glowing pink at the edges where it shielded her from the sky.  He stood where she had left him in the doorway.  

"I want you to... if I'm... just do it quickly, if you have to..." she called, exclaiming at his laconicism.  “You were going to kill me anyway, so don’t stand there like it's never crossed your bloody mind!”  Her face grew smaller, circumscribed by her grasp on the blanket as it tightened under her chin.

"Exsanguination or decapitation?"
"What's faster?"
“I can decapitate an adult human inside five seconds.” he replied.  She stared blankly.
"What, like... one pineapple, two pineapple?"  Edward folded his arms and Susan screwed up her frown.  “But will I... do you really burn?”
"Yes."
"Is it..."
“You become thermoreactive.  The skin blisters on exposure to sunlight, at any point on the body.  Your ankle might burst into flames before anything else.”  She swallowed the bilious mass that rose in her throat and stared down at her amorphous shadow on the grass.  “You might have asked if I had a knife.”
“I never really feel as though I have to.” she assured him ruefully.  “Alright... if it goes badly, I just want to say thank you... for helping me... I know it was you, and I'm grateful that you tried.”  

She loosed her hold on the blanket and threw it to the ground.

From the balcony William watched her stand in the midst of the grass in her T-shirt, looking back to his brother; Susan shed her few items of clothing while her companion turned his back, recommending she inspect herself.  He turned again at her repeated insistence to look over her back and shoulders, parting her hair and searching her scalp before declaring them asymptomatic.  As a final test she looked up and sought out the white disc of the sun, finding it no more dreadful than before and scrabbling at the dressing on her neck, ripping it free; it stuck to her fingers while Edward handed her garments back to her.  

Once more clothed, she stepped forward and seized his hands, holding them tightly in the violence of her gratitude.  Though he did not fend her off the sunlight made his features almost intolerably effulgent; in spite of it she glimpsed in him an expression divergent from the cool dissociation that he wore like skin, and further still from that behind the gun that he had held on her, and in a moment of chastening insight it occurred that he was neither as uncommunicative nor impervious as ignorance had insisted.  William put his hands on his hips as he came to them.   

“Don't do that, Christabel, you’ll get lead poisoning." he warned.  "And if you were wanting someone to cut your head off, you could have come to me.”   

“Oh shut up and be overjoyed that I’m alive!” she grinned, turning to grasp him comprehensively, then exhibiting the lesions on her neck.  “Look at this scar... it’s fucking Evil Dead... at this rate I'll be so hideously ugly in a year’s time I’ll have to start living in the attic with a mask or something... you can tell people I don’t exist and I’ll jump up and down on the ceiling while you’re having sex with models.”  

“She’s turned." Edward remarked, leaving them to one another.  "There’s an axe in the garage.”  
She called thanks to him again, but he did not look back.

C O N T I N U E D   N E X T   W E E K
© céili o'keefe   do not reproduce

After vacillating over crap photos of this ring on an auction site a year ago I decided not to battle hipsters into three figures and had resolved, rather bitterly, to let it go, telling myself I didn't really like it anyway.  On coming back from a walk the Lovely R announced he'd won it for me, smiling fit to burst.  But do we ever want anything less than just after we've convinced ourselves that some other d-bag's going to outbid us for it?  So I was sort of mad at him for spending the money and rolled my eyes and stomped away.  The thing turned up about 24 hours later and I was forced to admit he'd picked a winner.  It's well-marked and I think we did look up the maker, but I forget who it was now. 

Well, nobody died exactly, but staring into the bottomless yellowness of these two beauties does almost make you feel like you're balls-deep in some sort of sensory overload heaven.  Graham's on the left here.  He's a recent purchase and seems to be making a nice upright conventional sort of Austin bush.  Golden Celebration is a leggy triffid in our mild climate but so fucking gorgeous.

I couldn't see any diff between the roses on the tag so I thought others might like to see them compared in life.  The clear, glowing, organic-butter-yellow of Graham Thomas is very singular, going right through the bloom with no hint of pink or orange even toward the base.  The shape is cupped and flat-topped.  If it were a cat, you'd call it self-coloured.  GC looks pretty darn solid yellow to my eye until you compare it to the latter.  Then you see the slight mustardy dirtiness and the influence of that ochre streaking to the outer petals in the bud.  As you can see, it's a more informal bloom with a peony-like shagginess.

Scent-wise, neither rose knocks it out of the park but I prefer Golden's warmer, slightly fruitier perfume and rate it around 6/10 for strength.  Graham has a dash of dusty tea and a suggestion of laid-back myrrh but not a lot of sweetness; while this is a nice contrast to the stickier scents, I wouldn't select it on smell alone- 5/10.  

See our older roses reviewed  H E R E.