Sidestepping creative poison

A little writing from us to inspire a little creativity in you!

Jun 19, 2025

Hello there!

It’s the first of our WIP (work in progress) share weeks.

Maia’s up first. She discovered a glitch in the novel she’s working on, so this week she took a step sideways. How relatable is that— in writing and in life?!?

A new direction, including the piece below, flowed from her fingertips. She doesn’t know if it’s a stand-alone piece or if it’s leading her somewhere new. Take a sip and see what you think. And remember, the only thing that’s actually poisonous is not taking a sideways step when the path forward gets blocked.

Pop into the comments to tell us what you think and/or to talk about your sideways steps.

Secrets

In Paris in the sixteenth century, “sweet gloves” were all the rage. The idea of scented gloves had been brought to the royal court in the trousseau of the Italian heiress Catherine de Medici. While the French were unsure of Catherine herself, they were quite smitten with her handwear.
Catherine gifted gloves to court favorites, making subtly scented hands a status symbol. Not to be outdone, other royals began ordering their gloves to be scented with the intoxicating sweetness of orange blossoms or the earthy, mysterious scent extracted from the roots of summer’s first irises. To meet the demand, French glovers began undertaking the painstaking process of scenting handwear. Leather gloves were the preferred accessory, but the smells from the tanning process were particularly difficult to erase. So other materials were introduced— silks from Byzantium and fine lace from the rue Saint-Honoré.
Still, it was work to create and then set the scent: first, the chosen herbs were mixed with an animal fat or vegetable oil. This concoction was gently boiled, infusing the essence into the oil. The oil was then separated from the herbs. The gloves were dipped into this fragrant pomade and left outdoors to dry. Often this process had to be repeated multiple times, especially when the perfumer was trying to capture the subtle scent of violet or the distinctive lilt of jasmine.
Sweet gloves were costly: a gift that a queen— which Catherine became upon marrying Henry II— might bestow to show her generosity. And so it was commonly assumed that Catherine would have gifted a pair of these wondrous gloves to Jeanne d’Albret, whose son was affianced to Catherine’s daughter. But this would be no simple gift. Jeanne, Queen of the Basque kingdom of Navarre, was a Protestant while Catherine was a devout Catholic. The two religions, and thus the two queens, had a fierce rivalry. So when Queen Jeanne turned up dead, gossip spread that Catherine had delivered to her not only scented, but also poisoned, gloves.
Which plants produced a poison strong enough to survive boiling? Which poison could hide, scentless amongst the layered scents of lily and rose, and still be potent enough to kill as it caressed a queen’s palms?
Secrets.
I’ve been searching for them all my life. Not the secrets of people who cheat on tests or taxes. Gossips can have their whispers, and cheaters can keep their lovers. These are not the secrets I desire. If you robbed a bank and got away with it, that’s your business (although my inner-dragon lifts an eyebrow at the thought of snoozing on a pile of gold).
Have you ever stumbled across a Secret? It might run up your spine like wildfire or blow through your chest like the coldest wind. One moment you’re at dinner, laughing with your friends, and the next some ancient part of you is gazing out of your eyes, sniffing the air, speaking a truth you didn’t know until the words tumbled out of your mouth.
Is that how Catherine felt as she whispered botanical names into the waiting ear of her private perfumer, Rene lé Florentin? Was she startled when the shape of each flower bloomed behind her third eye, even as the names dripped from her lips: Oleander and Foxglove. Monkshood and Belladonna.
Rene was the hands, but Catherine, always Catherine, was the mind, ravenous and searching.