“Every perfume is made of top, middle, and base notes. Top notes are light, middle notes last longer, base notes last longest. A good perfume has all three, but they have to be in the proper proportions."
The sentences washed over me in a wave of technicalities, but I could feel what she was talking about. It had happened with every scent-paper I'd smelled, the fragrance shifting, telling a story that deepened even as it disappeared. Even nature was that way, if you thought about it- the bright green of the trees giving way to the dark and complicated dirt beneath, the ocean holding the scent of death under all that life.”