Black Omen

A mystery unsolved.

Tarakan oud, steam-distilled. Bright and animalic, not heavy. Sharp and smoky at first, then a long balsamic warmth. Thyme and lavender keep something green in it. Honey and caramel keep it from turning severe. Tobacco and benzoin sit resinous underneath.

Carried long enough, the weight stops reading as a burden and starts reading as character. Dark enough to mean something. Convenient enough to live in.

Melloculab is run by chemical engineers and it argues with the industry it sells into. Natural is not automatically better. Some of the most allergenic compounds in a bottle come from natural sources. So the synthetics get named rather than hidden, the ingredient list is published in full and the concentration with it, and the words clean, natural and vegan are refused for having stopped carrying information.

Blau is the house colour, a blue drawn from local traditions that once used it against mumps. Science says otherwise and Melloculab keeps it anyway, for what a colour can hold rather than what it can do. The oud is named by where it grew and so is the patchouli. The caps are finished by hand in Indonesia, so no two match and none matches the display piece.