Une Envie de Sel

For a girl who started out averse to any sort of lip contact (due, no doubt, to living a year in a crowded orphanage with an open cleft, and then several months of surgeries and recoveries) the Q has really taken to kissing of late. In the months after her second surgery last April, she had a lot of very tight scar tissue binding the upper lip, which made it difficult to pout like this. But she has since loosened up and gained, as you can see, full mobility. This newly-discovered kissy face is a useful tool, which she uses to tempt, cajole, manipulate, and even dismiss people (she uses this liberally at the end of a social evening when she's ready to pack up and go home. She will gladly kiss and hug everyone in the room, friend and stranger alike, if it will get her on the road back to her bed. She also of course, as on this occasion, uses it simply to dole out affection to her "people", when she is feeling generous. This face, needless to say, is my undoing. Every ounce of steely-cold will in me turns to lukewarm mint jelly under the spell of this face. This is a face that could, dare I say, quite literally launch a thousand ships.

Photos taken after a superb breakfast at a friend's restaurant in Woodstock, Oriole9.