Jeremiah Buttz

“At the door to the shop, a bell tinkled, and moments later they seemed to enter the very flowering of lavender.
The scent was all around them; it curled and diffused in the air with a sweet warmth and subtlety, then burst with a peppery, musky intensity. The blind girls moved into another room. There they arranged themselves expectantly around a long wooden table, Mme Musset welcomed them, and a cork was pulled with a squeaky pop.
"This is pure essence of lavender, grown on the Valensole plateau," said Madame. "It is in a glass bottle I am sending around to the right for you all to smell. Be patient, and you will get your turn."
Other scents followed: rose and mimosa and oil of almond. Now that they felt more relaxed, some of the other girls started being silly, pretending to sniff too hard and claiming the liquid leapt up at them. Marthe remained silent and composed, concentrating hard. Then came the various blends: the lavender and rosemary antiseptic, the orange and clove scent for the house in winter, the liqueur with the tang of juniper that made Marthe unexpectedly homesick for her family's farming hamlet over the hills to the west, where as a child she had been able to see brightness and colors and precise shapes of faces and hills and fruits and flowers.”
― Deborah Lawrenson, The Sea Garden

“The first wave of homesickness caught Connie by surprise. She had not heard or felt its approach until it hit her hard, knocking her to the ground.”
― Sheena Billett, From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life

“It was almost 3 a.m. before Connie got into bed. Sipping cocoa in the cold daylight and listening to the silence, only punctuated by the distant barking of dogs, she began to wonder what she had done. What if she had made a disastrous mistake?”
― Sheena Billett, From Manchester to the Arctic: Nurse Sanders embarks on an adventure that will change her life

“Tell me who your enemy is, and I will tell you who you are.”
― Carl Schmitt