This week’s image is hot off the presses. I took the photo in the Dalwhinnie distillery warehouse just a couple of days ago. It is actually the first such room I’ve been in. As a life long non-drinker, distillery tours are an unusual joy for me. Some years back I accompanied my wife on a tour of the Arran Distillery at Lochranza. We were the only people on the extended tour so we had a good long session exploring the ways of Scottish Malt Whisky. The tour guide showed me the trick of pouring a few drops on my hands then rubbing them together until almost dry before cupping over my face and smelling.
The experience was fascinating. The honeyed notes of the particular whisky I sampled first brought me back to my youth in which my grandfather used to send over tiny glass vials of ‘liquid honey’ from Malaysia. I was excited to discover that as the whisky residue dried on my hands it offered different scent profiles – a reasonably simulacrum of the varying taste profiles you would get on drinking it. From that moment on I’ve been hooked and take the opportunity for a tour whenever fortune allows. Despite that, it’s the first warehouse I’ve made it into.
Back to Dalwhinnie. The packed earth floor, dim lighting and amazing scentscape of the warehouse was wildly evocative, as was the vast array of oak barrels. I snapped a few shots on the off chance that one would provide fodder for the story-trove. I will admit to tweaking the image a bit – the colour balance was a little too stark for my liking, and I wanted something more suggestive of flame-lighting for a more magical atmosphere. Otherwise its basically untouched.
Cauldron stepped lightly across the barrels. His sensitive feet picked up echoed vibrations as their counterparts landed. Each one a spectrum reflecting the composition of the contents. He stopped at one. The vibrations had seemed… wrong. Lowering his face to the cask he tasted the scent. Carefully. Only fools drew deep breaths of a potion while it was maturing.
With a hind-foot he spun a complex knot of silk to mark the barrel before moving on. That one would need more attention later, but there were many potions approaching maturity. Any of them might need his attention or be spoiled beyond use.
At the end of a block, he cast a web to the low ceiling and swung across the narrow aisle. He had balked at the wasted space, but Malachite had insisted. While the task of attending to the potions naturally had fallen to Cauldron, it was not beyond the realms of probable that someone else might have to. Malachite certainly couldn’t go clambering over the oak vessels. Even if he could, his steps would not capture the wealth of information that Cauldrons eight highly attuned feet could.
The hairs on his legs rippled in the still air, disturbed by the currents of magic that underran this well chosen location. The site was not on a ‘ley line’ or any new-age nonsense like that. Though, he supposed, it was the real-world equivalent. There were places in the world where the current of magic surged closer to the surface than in others. This site, where the Court of the Tower of Magic had built its potions vault, was one of them. Though Nyree and Malachite regularly debated at length about the underlying pattern of emergence points, Cauldron knew that they would find nothing. Their appearance was as random as webs spun by his tiny cousins while exposed to various psychotropics.
Whatever the reason, there was magic here. Traditionalist as he was, Cauldron had searched for a convenient cave nearby. Nyree had simply summoned her power and built an underground warehouse. It was better in every sense: exactly where the magic was most potent and usefully shaped to store the maximum number of casks. Despite recognising this, part of him still yearned for the charm of a hidden cave.
The thrum of magic subsided and Cauldron tapped a complicated rhythm on the barrel beneath him. The vibrations came back strong and lively to his clawed feet. This one would be ready soon. He deposited a silk marker and continued on his way. The Court would need the contents of these barrels in the days to come. He hoped they would be enough.
Brandon Lim 