Sel was a tiny kingdom located east of Vetiver, across the Sea of Voices. It shared most of its southern border with Tux. When Tuxedo demand for moon poppy nectar exploded, the Selenite monarchy imposed import duties and borrowed against future yields, which made the nation–or at least the royal family–suddenly extremely wealthy. The crown projected its sovereign power not through prudent policies; effective diplomacy; or air, land, and sea dominance; but through the conspicuous accumulation of Indigo Empire paintings and decorative arts, and the breeding of dogs that, with each subsequent generation, were larger and more precarious of health and balance.
Whereas Sel considered itself a sovereign nation, Vetiver regarded Sel as a kind of autonomous region of Vetiver. The latter conception was probably the more accurate of the two, given that Vetiver made substantial–and clandestine–monthly "donations" to the Selenite crown in exchange for the right to maintain basic infrastructure on, and rapidly deploy troops and other assets to Sel's border with Tux. One could say that it was Vetiver, not "moon poppy mania," that was the reason for the continued existence of Sel.
Sel may have been poor at statecraft, but it excelled at the fabrication of illusions. It supported a thriving film industry through which the country exerted a modest level of cultural soft power. A requirement that all films produced in Sel be entirely in Selenite ended up playing a not insignificant role in preserving the tiny kingdom's language through subsequent waves of colonization.
The montane bogs of Sel were the only place on the planet where this flower and its pollinator, the "plague doctor" moth (so named for its bulging eyes and shaggy gray proboscis), existed. And here I must apologize, for "moon poppy" is a very rudimentary translation. In the original Selenite, the name meant something more along the lines of "flower whose essential character is activated by the moon." And in fact, the moon poppy was not a true poppy, but rather a kind of heather, with delicate, bell-shaped flowers that seemed to vibrate in the moonlight.
The raw pollen from the moon poppy was fatal to all fauna except for the plague doctor moth. But after being shipped to Tux and undergoing a process whereby the grains of pollen were plucked from the nectar, the nectar could be distilled to produce an essential oil used as the dominant middle note in Silhouette, a luxury fragrance produced in Tux by Maison d'Être.
Moon poppy nectar could only be harvested twice a year, during spring and fall, and only during a full moon. To harvest the nectar, technicians in positive pressure suits mimicked the behavior of the pollinator, stimulating the petal and stamens of the flower with three soft metal filaments until, like a sigh, the anthers exhaled a burst of pollen encased in beads of nectar. The precious nectar was collected in glass flasks for transport to Tux. Technicians needed to be careful to seal the flasks as soon as the nectar was exhaled by the flower. If a fly so much as sneezed into the flask, all of the nectar would be rendered completely unusable.
Silhouette was a fragrance that could be classified as a "trashy floral." Do not let that nomenclature mislead you into thinking that Silhouette was a common fragrance, however; for Silhouette was anything but. From the moment of its birth in the mountains of Sel, until the last whispers of scent rose from the skin, dissolved into the breeze, and finally died, Silhouette exuded luxury, mystery, melancholy.
Let us begin our description with the bottle. It was made of frosted glass and shaped like a block of ice. Its sides tapered inward, arriving at slender neck, to which a pump atomizer was affixed. As soon as the pump was depressed, the liquid entered the tube and was drawn upward, before finally exiting the nozzle in the form of a fine aerosolized mist.
Clear, almost strident top notes of citrus and bergamot came out first, fading into middle notes of anise and moon poppy, before the anise notes descended and base notes of musk, amber, and sandalwood emerged. The sandalwood and moon poppy notes remained, resonating like the tones of a singing bowl, as the musk and amber notes fell away. Anyone who had experienced Silhouette, upon detecting again the merest shadow of it, would find every detail of their first encounter with the fragrance--the scratchy tunic, the light falling across the cafe tables, the woman with purple fingernails folding and unfolding an empty sugar packet, the man in a suit ordering a double espresso--coming back to them in a flood of memory.
Demand for Silhouette was so high that lines on release days stretched half a mile or longer. Vetiverians who could afford the fragrance could also afford to hire professional line sitters who would sit in lawn chairs for several days, sipping from thermoses of bitter coffee, while their employers went about their daily business, going out, returning home, returning to the office, the opera, the club.
Soon after Tux restored its democracy, Vetiver denaturalized Dimitri Phanaenopsis. Shattered, he began pickling his organs in gin. He never worked again. The skin on his gorgeous face turned the color and texture of dried cuttlefish. In a freak accident on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the theatrical release of These Very Stars, the glass roof on his atrium shattered and fell on him, killing him instantly. He was found by his maid, face bloodied, eyes staring up at the sky in disbelief.
In Sel, overharvesting of the moon poppy led to the extinction of both the poppy and the plague doctor moth. When the poppy bubble burst, no amount of debt restructuring could save the crown from its creditors. However, it turned out that the monarchy's loyalty was less to their kingdom than it was to "the lifestyle to which they had become accustomed." In exchange for their abdication, the monarchy received full immunity and protection in Vetiver. Vetiverian military transport airlifted to safety the royal family, along with its furniture and art, and a menagerie of giraffes, monkeys, camels, and sharks. They continued to live a lavish life in Vetiver, while Vetiver set about establishing an officially recognized puppet government in Sel.
Arabella Rye was never heard from again. There was much speculation about whether she had fled to Vetiver with the Selenite princess, whether she had finally been captured by Tuxedo agents, or whether she was simply sitting on stacks of cash, living her best life far from the public eye.
Over the course of several generations, the pro-democracy party in Tux gained some ground, lost some ground, and then gained some ground again. Tux's electorate was one that could be by turns fickle, vindictive, and sanctimonious; but it was nevertheless always vigilant. The Ninth Republic remains in place as the current and legitimate government of Tux.
I must confess that I question my motives for documenting and sharing this story. Do I offer it as a cautionary tale? As a message of hope? Perhaps I am only trying to fill the silence with my meaningless little words. Thank you, reader, for your indulgence.
Since the events documented here transpired, all known prints of These Very Stars were destroyed by the governments of Vetiver, Sel, and Tux, though the raw footage may still exist somewhere, in the hands of collectors or in one of several "shadow archives" that emerged during and after the Tuxedo protests. References to the film were purged from official sources. Nevertheless, bootleg copies continue to circulate widely among inhabitants of of all three nations. Hundreds–maybe thousands–of versions are extant, versions featuring all variations of the plot, versions in which myriad futures are possible.