We live in a beautiful place.  It enjoyed some 20C the other day, which was a record for the month.
June is supposed to be winter, with temps between 5 and 10 C.
I personally feel as though this super-ugly climate clusterfuck stuff is going to kick off much sooner than most people realise; it is already underway in more marginal parts of the world.  We don't have kids, have never owned a car, don't fly and live very modestly, but we'll still be eating shit along with everyone who couldn't be bothered to do one fucking thing to be less of an environmental catastrophe.  Cheers, arseholes.  Cheers.

"We rode into Samarkand, and the buildings were the first that I had ever seen... the shapes were like things in dreams, and I asked Kala'amātya if the wind had made them out of stone... he said the i'ss'it had made them through their labour, which I didn't believe.  I had never stood between two walls, and I walked along with my hands on my head thinking they'd fall on me, until little i'ss'it started walking beside us doing the same.  I thought I was doing well until a camel train came in from the east and passed on either side, and I got down on my hands and knees and threw up in the road.  It was like the entire world had crashed into my head.  I lost it and passed out.  They had to carry me to Kala'amātya’s house.

It was a palace of whiteness, and... what are those things?  Rectangles... I had never seen a rectangle before.  Everything made out of straight lines... another universe, and it all belonged to him.  In the courtyard there was a kind of water that did as it was told... a chahār bāgh, with peach trees and Persian roses, and I couldn't look at them and smell them at the same time.  I just stared and stared and couldn't speak."

"A runner had gone ahead to let them know we were coming, and all the women of the house came pouring into the garden... Uighur, Russian, Rajastani, Greek, local girls, all in their best clothes so that they looked... like birds had married flowers... with gold and silver on their necks and arms, and bells tied in their hair, and they smelled of everything wonderful... champa and cinnamon and attar.  And they were doing this strange thing with their mouths...”  Sachiin pulled up the corners of his own into the shape of a smile with two fingers.  “They were happy to see him.  Sobh bexeyr, Kala'amātya.” he intoned, recalling the lilting, knowing fondness of their greeting.  “Before that, I could have counted the number of people who'd been pleased to see my brother on two fingers, but there they were, smiling at him like he was the sun in winter, bringing us water and asking who I was.  Their hands were warm, and every woman was a different shape and colour, which was so strange to me... even their voices were a hundred kinds of gold, the words tied like a necklace, with empty spaces in between.  

They took me into the house and fed me fruit and honey, brought new clothes and washed my feet and laughed and called me bakareh... virgin... because I was so modest and stupid.  All I could do was stare at them, but I decided then and there that exile was the life for me, and eating dirt at twenty thousand feet could go straight to fucking hell for all I cared.”

“I bet it could...” Susan laughed, but the colours of the image darkened with his silence while she drew another mouthful from the bottle.  “How long before it started going bad?”  

He sighed.
“I don’t know.  I don’t remember everything.” 
“Yes you do.”

“It took about a year.  We stayed with Kala'amātya, and he lived large.  Every summer he would put a corps together and go off fighting, then hit the silk route caravans when that slowed down... all of that paid out, and he was gone for half the year.  Rana stayed in her room at first and kept threatening to go home, but I could feel it changing... I could see, every time I tried to talk to her, that something was going wrong inside her head, I think because in her heart, she couldn’t leave the mountains.  It was like watching a wound turn bad.  I knew what was coming, but I didn’t know how to stop it.   

In summer most of the women did their own thing, the witches heading up into the mountains to study, some riding with my brother or with their own crews... hoes heading west to work the Caspian boats... but with Kala'amātya gone so long, the girls who stayed home started looking at me a certain way.  I didn’t think that Rana cared or even knew... stupid, I know, but I was stupid... I had no idea that people went crazy over that sort of thing.  

One day she came to me and said ‘Sachiin... did you know that you may kill these creatures, merely by striking them?’  And I walked out into the garden and found that she had beaten one of the kitchen girls to death.  In autumn, when Kala'amātya came home, he threw her out into the street.  I tried to talk him round but he threw me out and told me... a'ma sa'anae sahai'is siith nala elaiinae... come back when you've had enough.

Living alone with Rana was... hellish, really, in ways I had never imagined, but if I ran to his house she would follow me and beat his slaves.  After a while, when I left she would just walk into the bazar and kill whoever she got hold of... twist their arms and legs off.  That would go on until I came back.  One year Avi'ashān arrived, from nowhere, and then Nyāti, looking for him... everything was coming apart in the mountains, with Ana'siām'ilye disgraced... people were leaving every day and going into the sea, but we didn't know until they told us.  For a while, Nyāti handled Rana better than I could, but it didn’t last.  Losing the mountains was the final straw for her.  Kala'amātya would ask me... nala siith i’nala elaiinae... have you had enough, Sachiin?  But I could never say yes, because I knew once I did, everything he'd do to make her go into the sea would be on my head.  When I looked at her mad face, I knew I was too weak and vain to think of myself as the one who had wished death on her."  The snow slowed in the darkness until each mote seemed shed in bitter accord with his account.  "If I hadn’t been that way, who knows how many people would have lived another day... Kala'amātya might have had the time he needed with Helaine.  Her death wasn’t even Rana’s fault.” he admitted, his voice so quiet that she closed her eyes to hear it.  “It was mine.”  He brushed the snow from his hair.  “His never saying it is hard... I wish he'd grab me by the throat and dangle me off forty storeys... but he won't.”

Susan leant over her lap and assured herself of his attention before speaking to his admission.

“When my parents died they were on their way to pick me up from my aunt’s house." she sighed.  "I was supposed to stay the weekend but she’d found some cigarettes and I don’t know... condoms, I think it was... in my handbag, something completely stupid and we’d had this horrible fight, so I wanted to go home.  I had to go and live with her after the accident.  I asked her once if she blamed me, and she said yes... she blamed me, my parents, the car, the other driver, the weather... herself… but she said that's just what you do when you’ve lost someone.  I was shocked at first, then I thought, god, I actually blame her, so I understood.  That's just... normal.”  When he opened his mouth she shook her head.  “That’s not my point, though.  Your brother isn’t normal, and I don't think he blames you.  Mostly he’s just glad to have you... you're lucky to have each other.  And I am glad to have you..." she smiled.  "You don't miss her, do you?" 

"Rana?  No... it feels like something that was biting my arm has gone away.  After everything she did, it's just... peaceful."

The dowager moon breathed her last into the clouds, her glow borne earthwards in the silver cells of every frozen element, as though the air were haunted by expiring spectres, their light extinguished as they met the ground.    

"I wonder if they knew when they first saw him..." she murmured.  "The priestesses... did they know he was the end of them, or did they make him Kala'amātya?"

"I've never known.  Helaine once told me we all take our own lives, one way or another, and I like to think Ana'siām'ilye was cutting her own throat with those blackthorn branches.  That would be..."

​"Poetic." Susan smiled.  "You're very zen about the strangest things."

He shrugged.

"What can you do?  I'm not the sharpest apple in the bucket."

She spluttered liquor and wiped it from her chin.

"Well, we're probably made for each other, then.  Priestesses never get it right."

Susan shuffled on her knees toward the window with the sleeping bag, grinning at his wary face then lifting the bottle to his lips, its contents prompting him to shudder at the flash of bitter fruit and ethanol.  

"Mmm... génial..." he coughed.  "Merde, c'est bordelique."  He turned his head from the kiss she bestowed in remediation.  "Cloudcheeks, I'm too cold..."
"I don't care." she insisted, taking his face in her hands.  His mouth was perfumed by the hueless liquor, tasting of distant apple and anise, and of the newborn winter descending behind him, the season that had settled in his skin and drawn his pupils into snake-like straits.  She pressed her lips to his left lid, chuckling as their warmth reversed the transformation, if only unilaterally.  "Is this you, when you're at home?"  The cover cosseted their voices as she pulled it over their heads.  He nodded, and she kissed him again, taking his hands and drawing them beneath her jersey so that they closed upon her waist, their breathtaking differential sliding slowly into novel, delicious inverse on her skin.
"You're making me feel like an enigma wrapped in a something else." he whispered.
"I know there'll always be some monsterism, but most of you is five-star." Susan admitted.  He sighed softly against her neck.
"That kind of talk just won you a super-deluxe trip downtown."
"Speak more French..." she urged, grasping his neck as he hoisted them both out of the window and dumped her down onto the pine needles.
"Je ne peux pas le faire... pour le principe... c'est pour ton bien..." he murmured while she dragged his shirt over his head and struggled to assist in the removal of her trousers, stifling the laughter prompted by discombobulation.  "I do miss parts of summer, if I'm honest... the only thing standing between me and la petit gâteau was half a foot of fresh air, or knicker elastic that was suicidal anyway..."  He paused to suck the cache of freckles on the face of her thigh.
"I miss mattresses.  Missionary with a mattress... it always feels like I'm going to hell for it with you.  I don't know how you manage it."  She closed her eyes as her legs were persuaded into dissociation.
"Practice."
"Whatever you're doing has to stay under the blanket, and en francais."
"Ça va sans dire."
​


CONTINUED NEXT WEEK
​© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce

Yes, and fuck it all; beautiful it may be, but Lonely Heart's performance sucks massive arse, in practical terms.  It is the Keanu of the Velvet Matte line; picturesque and useless.  Puzzingly for such an irreproachable stable of pencils, this shade is problematic in a basic, cheap-arse sort of way, suffering all the cardinal sins of separation, migration, line settling, patchiness and cementitious mouth-feel.  I  was gobsmacked when I applied it for the first few times, amazed by the crappiness of the result.

It's true that I have been an apologist for lesser shades and am all about recouping value with amendment.  Just like Keanu, Lonely Heart is too beautiful to ignore and I am still experimenting with redemptive measures that won't pollute its divine tonality.  Look at the hand swatches; see how it resists looking unsophisticated, even in the strongest warm sunlight?  Looking at it on the back of the palm, you would never suspect the kind of fuckery it pulls when applied where it counts.  

​I tried it over Urban Decay Ultimate Ozone primer pencil and, while that dealt with the clumping/patchy issue, the resulting finish made the Sahara look positively dewy and felt like Moroccan leather layer cake.  It also abolished the lovely violet leaning Lonely Heart gleaned from my natural lip, so I CPR'd that rosewood tint with some dabs of Bite Licorice.  It looked good.  For ten minutes.  Before quickly lapsing into muddy, clown-ring horror.  Mixing it with the recent and beautemous Bite Beauty Clove liquid lipstick (I will review it soon) offers some degree of salvation; 'tis still a tragic compromise.

Resist Lonely Heart.  Enjoy the pictures and dream of what could have been.

L2R, MAC unless stated: Russian Red, Nars Lonely Heart, Paramount
​Nars Audacious Deborah, Chilli, Jasper, Auburn pencil natural outdoor light

Some people want to complain about trains but I like them, even when they're bouncing me out of a great sex dream at 3.47am with brake screech and hard rumbles.  Every time a train goes past, 34785 trucks don't.  Think of it that way.

Will some arsehole please reinstate the formerly awesome Dunedin to Christchurch passenger service, because that route is dope and NZ busses are spectacularly ghettto.  Only here would an incredibly scenic and already extant line like that, between two major centres godammit, sit idle for years.

I might be the last person to know about this band but I'm on it now, okay?  Fuck.

White's warm/cool and pure/dirty variations can look fucking horrific within spitting distance of each other.  Check prospective tonalities against neighbouring plants before you dig the hole and achieve this outrage aux bonnes mœurs in your own demesne.

Despite the drawbacks, some people are all about a white rose, no matter what.  If you're one of them, you've probably been pointed in Glamis Castle's direction.  It's a David Austin baby from his middle period and I'll get to the significance of that later.

The top left pic is by no means the full measure of this unfortunate tendency.  GC is planted on its own in an area with great ventilation and extra fert etc., but still it poxes up like the fucking Toxic Avenger, hangs on to the offending foliage and joins forces with its nasty dad, Graham Thomas, in spraying plague around the garden.  I suspect them of rusting my garlic during bad years.  Behold its tangled, thorny fugliness below.

It's only a little camera so there are some technical challenges but I like how it blows out, just like an eye.

The harbour is an unusually three-dimensional place, strictly contained by rims of hill and either expanded or compressed by cloud.  On a bright cirrus day the blues are infinite, stained yellow by the slanted sunlight and pulled from azure into turquoise.  Then the northeast cloud rolls in from the ocean, pouring through the gates at Taiaroa and over the Hare hill to set a leaden lid on everything, lying so low you feel as though your hands could brush its undercarriage.  One is a palatial ballroom, the other a mist-dripping cellar.  I like both.

This isn't drone footage.  We climbed up to the lookout hill on foot to get these pics and that series of abrupt inclines sucks with lunch on board, let me tell you.  I had to stop once on the last leg to reoxygenate and felt like an aged fatarse, but had my chagrin assuaged by the pall of cigarette smoke from some lazy random who had driven the whole way to the top.  I gave up smoking twenty years ago and have never owned a car.  

​Superiority intensifies.  

A towering complex of feral Tasmanian Blue Gums, Monterey Pines and Cyprus sp. flourish in the uninhabited belts of hillside encircling Port.  Passionfruit and Muehlenbeckia vines entangle their lower storeys and tend to safeguard them from dipshits with chainsaws; birds sing all day from this ribbon of humanless green, fantails and warblers swooshing down over your head as you walk the Back Beach road that runs parallel.  

Unfortunately, this miniature forest also seethes with feral possums, who demolish the regenerating native vegetation.  We trap them for The Halo Project, a predator-reduction initiative linked to the local Orokonui Sanctuary, and they have just begun an intensive push to get their numbers down toward elimination.

There is often a curiously gaudy, oversaturated effect to the autumn light that falls on the paddocks in Sawyers Bay; I think it's the heavy volumes of water carried by the fresh grass that glows and amplifies the yellow tones.  This scene illustrates that effect at about half-strength.  When it's fully lit, the quilted, undulant farmland looks almost candied through the smudgy pines, but it usually passes before you can get a lens on it.  Annoying.

The South Island is not much more than a brief affront to the vast volumes and momentums of the Southern Ocean, a montane blip to winds and oceans that scream virtually unimpeded around the tail end of the planet.  So we get a lot of visible atmospheric stratification, with clouds headed this way and that on their various business.  High horsetails usually mean trouble is a few days out, so you'd better get shit done in the garden before that cold southerly slams into and bows the big front windows and covers the road with pine needles and huge ribbons of gum bark.  Bubbly cumulus lazily mass and disperse just a hundred meters or so over the harbour; the same shape will be born, over and over, in the lee of an island and the space of half an hour.  

Everything worth knowing is annotated in this rhythm, all meaning, all process, all denouement.  

​I agree with his reflections-as-portals premise in that I avoid looking into puddles when baked.
see the rest here

But that's my problem, not yours.  If you haven't caught wind of the unparalleled excellence of Bite's sticks yet, pull the dicks out of your ears.  It's not 2002.  There's no need to be wearing the questionable shit you bought at the chemist.  Throw that stuff away or regift it to your more ratchet friends and treat yourself to an Amuse Bouche shade.  There are different levels of coverage and moderate variations in finish, so read a few reviews to find exactly what you're looking for.  Or you could honestly almost pick one at random.  They are thoroughly lovely.

​Crushed Chili is from the LE Spice Collection, which contained some earthy bangers; I almost went for Hot Harissa but decided I needed more warm intermediate shades.  It was a good choice.  ​The texture alone is worth the $40 or so NZ bucks outlay- unctuous, comforting, impossibly pigmented, satin-smooth and kind to neglected lips.  ​

Colour-wise, Crushed Chili is infuriatingly ambiguous in the tube and I was pretty flummoxed as to exactly what to expect.  Don't squint yourself into thinking it's some sort of deep dusty peach or dark melon.  Behold yonder hand swatches in afternoon sunlight, especially the multi-shade ones at the bottom of the review; they tell the real story.

I included both a fairly true red and orange at either end for accurate reference.  ​

Although I definitely appreciate asymmetry in Japanese artistic expression, I do not enjoy shit being off-centre in my daily life, so I apologise to all my strictly midpoint homies for this left-side-of-the-bed-wide-angle wonk.

A few years ago we were compelled to fell two young Himalayan Birches in a garden realignment and decided to screw them into the end of the bed.  Since then, all manner of international glamour has settled in their branches, including but not limited to:

Malband (for securing/decorating baggage and animals during migration), probably Anatolia or could be Persian/Bakhtiari, 20thC.  It's a particularly festive one with metallic thread and a billion multicoloured tassels.

Yak hair rope with white terminal details.  These are apparently made and used everywhere from the Wakhan Corridor to Mongolia and possess really peculiar physical properties, being exceedingly bristly, as well as light, strong and waterproof.  This one is from southern Tibet.

Ikat Hinggi, Sumba, circa midcentury onwards.  Sneaky dealers try to pass all of these impressive pieces off as antique, but if you've travelled through Indonesia in the last 30 years you may share my suspicion of this attribution.  To my jaded eye this piece has the slightly generic look and certain lack of conscientious detail that usually hint at modern production.  I could be wrong; the colours are definitely all combinations of red, blue and neutral, exemplifying the traditional palette.  All I know about textile production in Sumba is that it has always been regarded as highly idiosyncratic.   I'm not entirely sure they're still being executed in this particularly large format as the process is almost unimaginably skilled and laborious.
​
​No matter what their age, large expanses of ikat will always trip you the fuck out and reward hours of idle contemplation.  Here's an interesting piece on it.  I can't be mad at anything that boasts both chimeras and skull racks. 

Below right: Fuck yes I'll have that for $40: a lovely vintage Siirt battaniye, a Turkish/Kurdish iteration of that most treasured of domestic ephemera, the angora blanket.  Local goats are shorn of the silky fibres that are hand-woven into simple kilim-style cotton-warp plainweaves and then given a thorough brushing to yield this pelt-like pile.  They are light, dirt-resistant and warm without inducing the sweaty thermal panics that characterise my relationship with duck down.  

Just as an aside to that particularly baffling cohort of anti-wool (wool?  You're angry about wool?) agitators out there; shearing a caprine is not inherently distressing, cruel or painful and I'm not sure exactly where people have been getting that fucked up idea.  Wild sheep and goats lose their wool/hair via seasonal moults, like cats, but most domestic breeds absolutely require manual wool removal if they are not to end up lodged somewhere like a wad of felt.  I've shorn and crutched sheep myself, both with hand shears and a comb, so I'm not just talking out of my arse.  There's really no way you can shear a sheep without its cooperation.  They quickly learn the process and relax into the positions as you make your long blows down their flanks etc.  It's no more traumatic than getting a buzzcut when you'd rather be having lunch.  Watch this to see what I mean. 

If you have animal husbandry concerns (and all of us should), I urge you to get off your arse, visit a farm, see what goes on for yourself and make decisions from there.  PETA's campaigns have done more harm to public perception of animal welfare reform than anything else I can think of.

Top left: I'm not 100% sure where this length of tent/yurt band came from but because of the width and very atavistic motifs I'm guessing Central Asia, probably Uzbek or Kirgiz.  Turkish dealers always cut these for some fucking reason, which really pisses me off as it takes ages to sew them back together.  

^ Doga, Duacik, Tawiz or Moska, an embroidered amulet from northern Afghanistan/Uzbekistan, possibly Chodor Turkmen people.  This one has pages of the Qu'ran or a similar text (I haven't been tempted to look) sewn into it but others contain salt and other auspicious substances to repel evil influences.  A nice man gave it to me for washing his Kente cloths.  Thanks Philip!

Dog, circa last year.  The most expensive fibres in this array by a factor of 10, and connoisseur of Siirt angora.
(Disclaimer: apart from said dog which was an essential purchase, all of these items are vintage/second hand and nothing cost more than $100; most were less than $50, so we're not exactly flexing lol.)

I may have posted this before a while back, but I'm having a GM retrospective sort of night and who the fuck doesn't appreciate this kind of third degree burn?  It was TWENTY FUCKING YEARS AGO ARGGGGHHHHH bursts into ashy pall of ancient dust.  RIP George.  Still dancing on the D train baby.

​Nice.  See the rest here.

I don't want to keep you or any of these people in suspense any longer so I will just release my grades right now.

Yes/Thematic Success/ Would Wear to Supermarket Personally

There was some merit in Cardi B's paradisiacal genitalia cosy but big trains are so fucking played out and I lose IQ points looking at her just as a general rule, so no.

Burning resin spat from the tall splinter of pine that Sachiin pushed down into a narrow fissure in the table, hissing where it fell onto the back of his hands.  Their gracile shapes were painted in a flickering orange degraded into umber and obscurity by the light of the flame at the end of the wood, its plume of oily smoke snaking toward the ceiling of the chamber.  That it had once been a refectory was evidenced by the gaping, crater-like fireplace standing at the far end of its rectangular extent and still housing the great kettles and cauldarium, rusted and overturned.  The dusty black scent flushed down the chimney flue was overlaid by the amberous emissions of the living flame; Susan leant back as she sat before it, another glob of hot sap landing on the wood before her.

“That had better not explode.” she murmured.  A pile of medlars gleaned from beneath the two trees of Sachiin's discovery lay in repose upon the table, their strange autumnal smell reminding her again of their equally peculiar savour.  He sat down across from her, easing his long legs over the bench.  She dealt seven cards from the slick airport pack in her hands, face down onto the dusty grey timber. 

"You have to be quiet for this.  I'm going to pick up a card, and you have to tell me which one it is.  If you only get a colour, just say which one." she instructed.
"I'm not psychic."
"You don't know that."
"Yes I do." he chuckled dryly.  "The universe has spoken."
"Just do exactly as I say."

He set his chin on his hand, murmuring answers as she worked through the suite.  Her perplexity, writ faintly at first, deepened as the experiment concluded.  

"You got every last one wrong." Susan frowned, gathering the cards and suspecting the blamelessness of his expression before looking round the feeble details allowed by the torchlight.  “No Petrouchka again.” 
“A girl’s got to eat.”
“Eat what?  I’m the only thing on two legs for god knows how far...”
“Don’t ask, don’t tell.”
"I told you... she's avoiding me."

In entering the chamber Kala'amātya troubled the smoking flame but made no sound, and Susan quashed an embarrassing start, keeping both feet on the ground.  While he surveyed their seclusion mutely it occurred to her that he was providing an opportunity to demonstrate disinclination; when she made no obvious objection, he sat down at the end of the table and chose two medlars for himself.  The torch stood mirrored in the polish of their eyes as a golden ellipse, and she was struck, then disturbed by the idea that they would have dispensed with it altogether if she had not required it, contenting themselves with a darkness that was no more opaque to their perception than rain was to her own.  The glow was returned by their faces, its effacement of all minor detail rendering them so perfectly alike that one might have been the reflection of the other, though when she made a deliberate attempt to confuse them, she discovered it was not as easy as she feared.  She shook her head at Sachiin none the less.  

"You're dyeing your hair." she told him.

Kala'amātya drew his knife through the medlar in his palm and ate as though unaware of the scrutiny she accorded the entirely novel tableau; Sachiin’s stare narrowed in sympathy with the rest of his expression, shifting with the pressure Susan placed upon his foot under the table.  She addressed herself to their visitor.

“Have you seen Petrouchka?” 

“She left three nights ago.” Kala'amātya replied, while she selected her own piece of fruit.  

“Because of us?"

"No."  Sap sparked again from the torch.  

"What do you think the weather will do?”

He cut around a blackened portion of the drupe; she spectated patiently, leaning on her elbows.

“Snow.” 

“We won’t get stuck here, will we?  I thought we might get going, in case that happens.”

Again she waited, leaning further over her arms in an unconscious attempt to discern the wordless aspects of his discourse, finding only subtle disapproval of the inquiry in his gaze.

"Will we?  Get stuck here?" she pressed.  Kala'amātya chose another medlar.

“Christabel, he's not going to putt a fucking box of chocolates out his arsehole.” his brother assured her dourly.  She sighed his name.  “Susan…” he countered, wide-eyed.  "You don't have to pretend it's not gruesome... look at him... it's like trying to small talk with a giant fucking shrunken head."

She examined their guest again, revealing a tilt in her expression that grew while Sachiin continued to enumerate objections until they seemed more to obscurely commend than execrate their object.  Dealing seven cards for Kala'amātya, she explained the procedure briefly, receiving his silence as assent; he looked from each toward her as he rendered his verdicts.

"Six of clubs.  Black king.  Red queen.  Ace of spades.  Two of hearts.  Small red.  Black jack."  

Susan frowned as she attempted to articulate her findings.

"You um... you got them all right..."  He watched her colour at the implications as she stared at them in turn.  "You're not... are you?" she demanded.  Even as she spoke Kala'amātya's gaze caught and bound her own, altering to the colour in the foot of the flame, its consuming, gem-like blankness stoking her dismay.

"I can only read you when you're looking at me." he told her.  In the darkness of the wall against which he had leant Sachiin rolled his eyes and sighed at her horrified credulity, picking up one of the cards.

"He's fucking with you.  We can see them in your eye." he laughed, leaning forward so that she could perceive the red queen miniaturized upon the surface of his own.  Susan snatched it back from him, including them both in her admonition, her tormentor receiving it with the faintest of half-turned smiles.  Sachiin shrugged.  "Yeah well, I warned you about him."  
“What did those alujha want the other night?" she demanded.  "Did they talk to you?”
“They came to troll Pet for putting us up... she called them a bunch of banjo-picking ballbags and told them to fuck off.”
“And what else?”

His reply was complicated by another medlar and she turned to Kala'amātya for clarification.

“They were looking to be compensated for their loss of personnel.” the latter explained.
“You’re joking... what, money?"
“Initially."
"And..."
"We told them we weren’t carrying any currency.  Any claim they might have had was voided by their offensive anyway.”

Clearing his throat conspicuously, Sachiin let his stare settle on his brother’s face.

“See the rainbow this morning?” he asked.  She grinned as she shuffled the cards.
“No... you’re not still afraid of them, are you?”
“It’s not fear, it’s respect.”  
“I used to be scared of vacuum cleaners.” Susan chuckled, looking back to Kala'amātya.  “So, what... you told them we were broke... and?”

“They said they’d take you, in lieu of money.”  That she did not at first believe him was expressed in laughter and he elaborated.  “Your inamorato explained his objections the only way he knows how, and since negotiating with someone aspirating their own blood presents difficulties, I was forced to support his position.  After which they left.”

She scowled again at Sachiin.
"I thought you said it wasn't on."
"They started it."
“So... you beat them up and they went away with nothing?”  The cast of Kala'amātya's gaze confirmed it.  “Good.” she concluded, returning her attention to him.  He bore it stoically, the lack of unequivocal refusal in his demeanour like some persisting mirage.  She decided to test it further.  "What's India like?"

"Difficult to summarize." he replied.

"Could you have a go?"

"It's adjacent to Afghanistan."

In the ensuing silence she turned her expression to Sachiin, who smiled back at her contentedly.  

"I know it's probably horrible, but I really want to go to Afghanistan for some reason." Susan declared. 

"I don't care for it myself."

​"Shall we just go to India then?"

His disinclination was tangible, like a change visible through his skin.  The thought that his plans might diverge from their own in actuality was like a kick from a stranger, and something she could not immediately accept.  Taking the box of cigarettes from the end of the table she applied herself to picking out the gold tab from its cellophane.

"Why were you pretending to be an artist?"
"High spirits got the better of him." Sachiin mused.
"I don't understand why you weren't allowed to make anything.  It just seems completely mad."

Her knowledge of the ancient interdict sent Kala'amātya's gaze back to his brother, but he replied in his own time.

"It is the axiomatic fundamentalist ultimatum.  All creation performed outside the divine inceptive act is necessarily profane, and ours was a profoundly idiopathic subversion of the natural process... any hieratic structure was obliged to instate an orthodoxy emphasizing absolute legitimacy to confute the presumption inherent in all independent creativity."

She emitted a smoke ring, watching it slow and double over as it dispersed.

“So..."

"It suffices to say my motives may not have borne sustained inquiry."

Susan's frown migrated to the side of her face.

"I don't know about that... I just... I'm not convinced you ever do anything you don't really want to."

"I'm here, aren't I?"

"I don't know why... will you please just go back and find Lilian, for god's sake?  It drives me mad just looking at you."  Kala'amātya greeted her impassioned observation darkly.  "Do you honestly believe she never wants to see you again?  And don't say you don’t want to go against a woman’s word... you're not fucking pro-choice when it comes to teeth.”

“Would you have preferred to die of sepsis?”

“No.”

​“Some arguments are academic, some are not.”

Sachiin received her exasperation with equanimity, though the sound of his brother rising from the table pulled her off the bench in an impulsive attempt to prevent his departure.  He stood as though awaiting some concession from her; Susan was loath to provide it, sitting back down only when he moved to do so, wary of any further evasive measure.

"I... while you're both here, there is something we should sort out." she told them.  "I do know that if anyone's going to get dragged into an unmarked van, it's going to be me... if that happens, I want..."
"If you get picked up, we come and bust you out.  Je m'en fous." Sachiin interjected.
"But y..."
"The only thing that can't happen, Christabel, under any fucking circumstances, is us getting pinched together.  If I'm collared, you have to get as far away as fast as you can."  
"There are fifty billion of me... you're all that's left of you.  I mean it... do everything you can to help each other, but don't get caught on my account... promise me that."

The brothers looked to one another in a mirror-like consensus.

"If we end up in the pokey it's because we were dumb, or drunk, or both.  I wouldn't pull his arse out a wet paper bag and the feeling's pretty fucking mutual."
"You haven't even thought about this, have you?  You could wake up in a steel box with air holes and be stuck there for the next two hundred years while they do god knows what to you!  You won't even get the chance to blag your bloody way out of it." 
"That's the point of individual responsibility." Kala'amātya reminded her.  
"I said I wouldn't bust you out." his brother muttered.  "We got her into this shit and it fucking behoves us to get her out of it, if it comes to that."
"How long could you watch someone taping electrodes to her before you agreed to whatever they wanted?"  

Susan slapped a hand to her forehead.

"Thank you.  If anything happens to me, drag him in the opposite direction."
"The fuck he will."
"Acquire some defensive capability and it might not come to that." said Kala'amātya.  Susan dropped her head and shook it wearily.
"Will you both stop nagging me?  I told you... I hate guns, and I'd be complete rubbish at them anyway."  She lit another cigarette, squinting when the smoke from the torch swung back into her face.  "I did mean to ask you, though... what's it like, being shot?  Out of ten?"
"Twenty nine." Sachiin muttered.  "We don't have a luxury shock reaction.  We get it all, the going in, the hitting the bone, the turning round, coming back out again... it's very detailed." 
"Is there anything you can do to stop it happening?  Magic words... getting your tits out?”  

Kala'amātya appeared to deliberate upon the extent to which he should oblige her inquiry, the pause lending such weight to his reply that she was startled by, then suspicious of its brevity. 

“Run."  
"That's it?"
"He's being polite." Sachiin sighed.  "Do you really want the R-18 version?" 
"Do you want to stop being a patronizing muppet?"
"Out of any ten people with a firearm, seven will be competent to hit a stationary object at close range, five at a distance, two if it's mobile." Kala'amātya continued, unexpectedly.  "Ballistic weapons are the friend of the contemporary imbecile.  If you have a brain, use it if you don't want it emulsified.  Being female is to your advantage if you're willing to embrace the fundamentals."
"How do you mean?"
"Without training, you're too small to hurt anyone conventionally, so don't try, except in extremis."  She was less than pleased by the blunt nature of his assertion, but did not interrupt.  "Always cry.  A significant proportion of human males from any cohort cannot execute a weeping woman.  And offer sex.  Feign enthusiasm.  Someone will eventually cut your hands loose."  Susan folded her arms, looking away from him.  "There's no more discredit in that than there is in eating their food.  If you're committed to survival, the only failure is to waste an opportunity."
"I don't know if I could."
"I'm pretty sure most of us would fellate a fucking warthog if it had a nine to our ear." Sachiin assured her.  "You do whatever you have to do... I've done it, he's probably done it... live, and have a breakdown later." he added, far more gravely. 

​"How hard is it?  To shoot someone, when they're looking at you?"

Kala'amātya did not respond and his brother interceded.  

"It depends who you are... some people can gut you with a clawhammer but can't pull a trigger... others can strafe you stupid but couldn't slap a douchebag if he was teabagging their grandmother on the front lawn."  She screwed up her face; he leant across the planks and took a hit from her cigarette.  "Some people are born lucky and can do you both ways, right from the get go... the tueur fou, ange de la mort... but you really should learn to pop a cap, cloudcheeks, allez.  It's not like we're asking you to hang someone from a fucking light cord and go at them with a baseball bat.  It's baby steps to the psycho shit... for erm, most of us." he chuckled blackly.

Sachiin's companions looked to one another in silence.  

Susan had come to recognize the small cues provided by their detection of approaching parties, and sat up while their erstwhile hostess shuffled along the passage outside, tripping over the heaps of plaster lying by the walls.  She could smell Petrouchka before the latter hove into view through the arch in her saturnine mink, hands and mouth, chin, collar and sleeves blackened thickly by fluids that had lost their sheen and settled into tarry craquelure.  

“Look... is like chernozopy hut, in Akusha..." the vampyre gurgled, laughing at the humble nature of their arrangements.  “Black hair will grow from your ears.”

The clotted purple stink of her victims' blood was effused by the waning warmth it had confided, rolling over Susan when she slumped down with them.  A bottle of stolen home-brewed spirit and a flask wrapped in camouflage mesh clattered onto the wood before her; she pushed the former toward the brothers with a grimace, screwing the stopper from the latter and sucking down a long draught.  The sluggish consistency of its contents was demonstrated by the toiling undulations of her throat when she lifted the vessel skyward.  To Susan’s unique perception she was transfigured by her meal, overpainted with the dilute semblance of life, though the pulse-pink and infant blues had already begun to degrade.  More troubling was the flailing anima that still struggled within her enclosing skin; it held her eyes wide and worked her chest with the long-forgotten exertions of laboured respiration, pulling back her lips in a stranger's grimace over her half-translucent teeth.  From behind the flask Petrouchka caught sight of Sachiin exchanging a discreet manual remark with his sibling and spluttered blood that ran from her chin and down her creaseless neck, smudged against it by her collar when she moved.  

"What you say?  Don't, unless we all can hear!” she warned shrewishly, voice leaping from her throat.  "Po'shyol 'na hui... I know what you say... she eat alujha mudak and is drunk, like soldier.  These wolves, they don’t like me now, because of you but I don't care..."  Her eyes grew wider.  "I dujju them, why not?”  She shoved the bottle of spirit toward Susan and sagged on the bench, still clutching her flask in her small hand.  “You are still here?  Look at you, sitting like princess... drink, govno... get drunk." she told her.  "You don't have much time, 'suka."  

Sachiin's glance was pointed and she returned it in kind, sinking into the fur. 

“How many?” he asked.

“One, darlink... two, maybe.  I dujju two.  I don’t think they miss.  They weren't pretty, but... facile.  Trés facile.”  

She began a loose, divaricating monologue in three languages during which Susan turned slowly to him in search of reassurance; in reply he made a gnathic face, allowing his eyes to roll up into his head in imitation of the vampyre’s inebriety.  She sucked in her lower lip to contain her reaction to his impression, while Kala'amātya partook of the făţată sparingly, privately ruing his own broad comprehension.  

“But don’t you feel sorry for them... they were lucky... the deer dies with the wolf, but the wolf, he die alone, they say... these wolf don’t die alone.” the vampyre concluded, her observations meeting with a silence that spoke too plainly on the part of her companions.  She gave vent to a brief, roaring spate of embittered laughter, its alien nature prompting Susan to flinch away from it; Petrouchka reached out and snatched her arm, drawing it into the dense pelt in her lap, stroking it slowly.  “I forget... you are young and stupid.” she told her.  “You know how old I was, before this happen to me?  Fifteen year.  My father, he marry me to a man of fifty... oslayob... who force himself on me, every day, and flog me like plough horse when he could not.  What you do at fifteen?  Live in pretty house with family who love you... like him.”  She nodded at Sachiin.  “You can see in their face, these ones who were loved.  Look at this one...” she muttered, gesturing to Kala'amātya, her voice sinking into the thickly pleated vowels of her native tongue.  “Nobody love him when he was young.”  

Petrouchka slid her tongue over her teeth and used a second hand to encircle her guest's arm as though the first had called for reinforcement.  It burned with the strain of resisting the vampyre’s grasp, though Susan bore it as stoically as she was able.

“I know you could not be happy, Sachiin, as I am... you can’t smile until every body love you.  If I was Auberjonois, I would break her neck for you sending her to me.  But he think to have you back.”

“How bad is that stuff?” Susan asked him, reaching for the bottle of spirit and swigging from it before he could warn her; her spluttering recoil prompted another round of barking laughter from the vampyre.

“Is bad!” Petrouchka roared, the sound percolating in her throat as though the blood itself were speaking.  “Now we are friend, I think you tell me... you know of Sachiin, before he have you?”

"No, I fed her ketamine and chained her to an engine block." he assured her; Susan took another pull from the bottle, shaking her head as she replied.

“I knew there was something wrong with him before he opened his mouth.” 

“Yes...” the vampyre cackled.  “Of course he tell... he know you are not clever... your curious is poison, and it bite you for him...”

​“She’s the biter.” said Sachiin morosely.

“Will you please stop telling people that?”  Susan lost patience with the vampyre's grasp, twisting her arm then jerking it back toward herself.  Petrouchka’s head snapped sideways, small face lit by the frozen glitter of her gaze; she lurched at her, but Kala'amātya's fist caught the collar of her coat while Sachiin vaulted the table and sat down between them.  Planted in her seat, Petrouchka was held still until they were satisfied the impulse had passed, the brothers' dispassion lending the act a plangent surreality.  Susan settled on the far end of the bench, clutching her parka about her neck; slowly, marking the vampyre closely, she reached around her companion and retrieved the bottle, lifting it over his arms.

Their hostess reeled as she was released and took some time to reclaim what she had lost, her gaze and then her hands falling to Sachiin's where it lay upon the table.  He bore her wandering examination patiently until she addressed herself once more to Susan.

"You think I am a horror, but you love this..." she murmured, tracing his eccentricities with her fingers.  "So much you don't know."  Petrouchka took her guest's hand in her own and passed it through the torch flame, chuckling to herself while the sinuous plumes licked around his palm and between his fingers where they should have blackened them and conferred irresistible agony, turning cool velvet blue and remaining in an almost wistful association when he slid free of her grasp.  "See, kotik?  When you want to push him into fire, he won't burn.  Eto prosto pizdets."  She received no answer, and looked down at her coat, brushing small crystals of ice from its glossy nap.  “Look... did I say?  It snows.  Is snowing now.  I don’t like anymore... I think too much of de Marchand... it bring her back.”

Pearls of cold rosé pink were born in the corners of her eyes and spread across them slowly, holding on her lids before breaking down her face.  She slid toward Kala'amātya, staring up at him with a mouth bitterly downturned.

​"You think you were the only one to love her, but you don't know either.  Before you, she go to sleep with my hands in her skirts.  I give her pleasure, and she give to me..."  His silence drew at her as surely as any audible solicitation.  "Sometime, she speak words, over man... from village, sometime, from town... she bring, into her bed.  I look while he serve her, and I lie with them and take his blood, taste everything they do.  If I had life, you think she would choose you?"  Whatever she had sought from him seemed to elude her, and she lapsed back from her study.  "The snow always bring her back.  How can you look at it?  Sometimes, I cannot look, and I sleep, all through the winter, so I don’t see her.  I am careful for so long..."

“Belyaev...” Sachiin murmured.  “No one can change what’s done.”

“Be quiet!” she cried suddenly.  “What you do for her?  You are like him, you do nothing…”

​“Belyaev.” he interjected, shaking his head at her gravely.  Cognizance of his caution slid across her red-stained eyes as though she had blinked, but it was not enough to stop her.  Her murmur recommenced, turned with her gaze toward Kala'amātya.

“Do you know she did not trust you?  One night, before winter, she undress and look at me, and she say Trouchka... I am with child."  The vampyre met with lithic disbelief, which she disregarded.  "How can it be, I ask... have you known only this creature Kala'amātya?  She ask spirit, and they tell her... Walpurgis, on the Brocken altar, when everything is too close... it open her to you.  Was she happy?  No... she weep, because she know... you only want what does not need, and have nothing to give.  She drink the cup of roots, and was happy to be rid of this poor little thing, and we promise together, never to tell you..."  She looked up at the ceiling rendered so faintly overhead.  "When I see her in your house, I thought I die again, of joy, but she come for you... I cannot bear!  You are more dead than I, you poison thing...”

Sachiin stood and stooped to slide his hands beneath the arms of their intoxicated hostess, lifting her from the bench and setting her on her feet, walking her toward the black shape of the doorway.  Susan sat with Kala'amātya, the flame settling once more into strict verticality.  The dread spirit of Petrouchka’s revelations hung about them in the air, neither undone nor redacted by her departure; she felt them keenly even in her innocence, and how they fared amid the agonizing context borne by her companion was something she did not care to contemplate.  Returning alone, Sachiin used his gaze to suggest an exit, to which she assented.  His brother lifted the burning pine from the table and handed it to her as she passed him, remaining alone in the spreading umbra that closed around him.


​CONTINUED NEXT WEEK(ish)

© céili o'keefe  do not reproduce
​

​Alligator mississippiensis, Theloderma corticale, Dendrobates tinctorius azureus +Atheris hispida 
I grew up with a plethora of reptilian/amphibian pets and really miss their forthright energy (they're just too difficult to house and feed well in New Zealand so I abstain here).  
Do your eyes a favour see the rest of these portraits here

You know your raver days are two fucking decades behind you when you start getting just as excited about incoming blooms as you once did about BPM, random sex and synthetic stimulants.  My stimulants are organic nowdays.  Autumn used to be a bit of a dud around here since we don't get great deciduous colour, being windy and maritime; all the summer flowers are fucked out and the aloes have yet to get their shit together.  

So I decided to establish a bit of a crazy pot farm in the front yard.  It covers the scabby concrete and tarmac patches, feeds the bees and pleases the eye with an array of exotic salvias and all the half-hardy beauties that might lose their roots in the clay.  It's getting more and more crowded as I get into all those mesoamerican sages and South African bird polinated thingies that do so well here.  Above: Aloe hoffmanii, first flowers I think tee hee!

The first flowering on this exceptionally emerald green Aloe glauca clone.  I almost lost it a couple of years back to root rot after letting too many old leaves get manky around the base.  Don't do that.  

Salvia splendens 'Giant Form' apparently tops 6 feet and the hot red variant certainly curb stomps the colour gamut in late afternoon sunlight.  Bought both the merlot and the scarlet versions; it was the right decision.

Salvia involucrata  
​This head is only half-out but is already gratifying us with this intense candy blue-pink. I have several largely unnamed forms of this group and I love them unconditionally.  They become enormous here with our decent rain and pissweak-to-absent frosts.  The foliage is huge and plush.  You can hear the clickety clack of bumblebees sawing into the base of the flower to get at the nectar (they are bird pollinated in native situ I think).  Plant some today.

Salvia fulgens 'Red Dragon', a tall, open bush with attractive corrugated leaves and nonstop fuzzy scarlet floral business.  Something, I suspect a Bellbird, comes along and snaps off half the damn heads trying to get at the nectar.

Fuzzy.  Silky.

If I had a dollar for every euphorbia I had going on, I'd have about $12.50.  The lazy gardener's main ho.  Can't remember the name of this cultivar, but it's from Marshwood Gardens in Invercargill.  Their online shop is like a tinny house for plant tragics.  Sheeeeeeiiiiit.  Peruse at your peril.

Salvia sagittata supposedly but it looks like it might be a hybrid with something else.  The flowers and parts of the stem are an incredibly dense Afghan lapis blue, which is as much as you can ask of any given organism really.  Not quite out yet, but you get the picture.

Below: good old Salvia leucantha, which I only discovered a couple of years ago after encountering its luxurious, almost extraterrestrial plushness in the flesh at a garden centre.  

​​Always touch plants.  The tactile dimension is a whole nother thing.

I always try to have some Dagga (Leonotis leonurus) going, even though this plant seems to labour under a curse in our garden, attracting all kinds of misfortune and mysterious fatalities.  I have a slightly disappointing creme version too, which unfortunately looks like used bogroll a lot of the time due to the unsightly off-whiteness of the bloomage so I might pass it on.  Dagga is supposed to be psychoactive but it looks  like it tastes like something you would do in your late teens because you couldn't get any real drugs.  So I haven't been tempted.  Give it a few more years.  I may well regress to vomiting sludgy decoctions in someone's backyard.  Lol.

The honey-seeking birds tend to give it a fucking hammering, which is why some things are better closer to the house where the avian contingent is a bit more circumspect about humping the shit out of popular plants.