Wine Down Candle

of every healing hand that has ever tended me after I had spent myself past all sense. Sage moved beneath it, dry and silver and old, the smell of leaves burned to cleanse a room of what has gone before. I breathed, and felt the ache of Kushiel's Dart stir even here, where all was meant for stillness, for there is no place so peaceful that I do not find the sweetness in its sting. Then warm oil was poured across my shoulders, and the harder edges softened. Lavender rose from it, and chamomile beneath, gentle as a hand smoothing the tension from a wrist, the kind of quiet that unknots a body whether or not its owner has given leave. I had not known how tightly I was strung until it began to loosen me. I lay upon the warm stone and let it, and for once asked nothing of myself. And beneath all of it, where the warmth of my own skin drew it out, the deep notes waited: cedar, dry and clean and steadying, and sandalwood softer still, creamy and low, the scent of a temple at the close of day when the incense has burned down to embers. It stayed with me long after, when I rose and dressed and went back out into the world, a stillness carried on the skin, so that I might close my eyes anywhere and be, for a breath, at peace again. 40 hours - 5oz 80 hours - 12oz