I’ve had a line from a Terry Pratchett novel rattling in my head since my first spray of bogue’s Unfiltered 8:

“The hare runs into the fire. The fire, it takes her, she is not burned. The hare runs into the fire. The fire, it loves her, she is free.”

Hares are deeply entangled in British mythology. Rarely seen but often dreamed of, these speedy moon-dancing tricksters, shape-shifters, fire-runners, and transformed witches inhabit our collective memory. Boudicca, the rebel queen who burned the Romans out of London, carried a hare in her cloak, as companion, omen, and guide.

Stubble fires have been illegal here for decades now, but I used to have ground-level nightmares about the animals fleeing from the consuming flames, birds spiralling up through the smoke. A story I read, perhaps, from the viewpoint of a mouse. I know that when I was four, the moorland burned. I stood on the windowsill, watching the rising smoke, the rushing fire, the scramble as people tried to dig firebreaks, beat out sparks before the wind snatched them free. And the roaring sound as the fire fed on the summer-dried brackens and brambles and stretched monster-high. Motionless, I blistered my hands against the window glass, worried that the snakes and slow-worms I’d spent long afternoons watching wouldn’t be able to get out of the way quickly enough.

@dignitychicken rightly put Unfiltered 8 in the “rebel femme” category. It is. 8 is a scent for Boudicca and all her grand-daughters. There is something wonderfully contrary about this perfume, something subversive. Because the hare runs into this fire, not away. Stay or run away, and you’ll be consumed, never escape, never outrun it, but leap through the fire, and you’re free. This is not the world-consuming fire of T-Rex, but a wild flash that burns fast and moves on. The smoke hangs like a memory all day, but on the other side of the fires the hazed-sun clears, the air is lighter, the weight drops away. It feels like the birds rising with song again, not beating against the sky in panic. And deep in the earth, there are tangles of vetiver roots, growing, grounding. The fire, it loves her. She is free.

originally posted 18 July 2019