#Burning Books for Pleasure and Profit

[bookcoversonly]

Title: Burning Books for Pleasure and Profit | Author: K.J. Parker | Publisher: Tor (2022)

[whispersoflullaby]

During the course of few days the most commonly used adjectives for Lu Guang in social media caught my eyes and irritated me to my core. The adjectives are- "selfish", "hypocrite" and "unhealthy" (in the way lu Guang loves Cheng xiaoshi *many are in denial about that too and I don't have the excruciating energy to argue with them*).

Now, let me shed light upon the text book definition of selfish - "one who is chiefly concerned with one's own personal profit or pleasure." (Wikipedia). Okay, so Lu Guang trying to save Cheng Xiaoshi is an act of selfishness? Isn't it basic instinct to protect our beloved? When our house is on fire isn't it human behaviour to look out for our people and trying to save them from the massacre or do we look out for our neighbours and try to look out for them when our own house is burning? When I have 2 dollars in my bank account and the ransom for saving an unknown person is exact 2 dollars, for the humanity and compassion and love for others I will spend that two dollars on that person but I will not take a loan for that right? But for my beloved, for my friends, for those who matter in my life the most I will not think even for a bit to go that extra mile and take loan from the bank and pay the hefty interest for the rest of my life. That's how struggle for existence, struggle to stay relevant is. Darwin's survival of the fittest isn't a very new concept right? It's our basic human instict to look out for our community people, seek out for them. In Hindu mythology, there's a saying - friends and beloveds should be like Krishna and Karna- those who stay by your side in dire need, even when on some level you are wrong, even when the world is against you. And why people are considering that saving people's life , changing timeline and messing up the fundamentals of time theory is just like a kid's play for Lu Guang and he don't have to pay any price for that . A price that can even make and remove his existence from everywhere? Where is Lu Guang's fault that he dared to dream to be with his beloved, the only person he has? In this context I will like to give reference to a line of vortex - "knowing it all am I destined to fall?, Knowing it all, Like once you did for me . " This this the Biblical reference to the story of Adam and Eve. Lu Guang is only able to know, he is not able to change everything. He can only try to change , keeping everything he has on sake, even his life. One thing - if Lu Guang sacrifices himself for everyone, how will he exist - Lu Guang's spirit animal is a cat, he doesn't have nine lives literally.

Next comes the very common trope of blaming Lu Guang as a hypocrite. For the reference I am attaching the definition of hypocrite from Cambridge Dictionary ( I don't think there can be a more authentic source for the definition) - Someone who says they have particular moral beliefs but behaves in way that shows these are not sincere. Okay so are we mixing up the very basic concept of moral beliefs and human instict to love, to care, to save and in general the basic human instict to "struggle for existence" . Even a suicidal person struggles on the threshold point of of their urge to live and their wish to end this life. Has Lu Guang ever claimed that he is that resurrected Chirst figure. In this late capitalist state he is here to save the mankind and punish the sinner. No, right ? So why are we making him a God like figure? And Lu Guang is hypocrite about what? For not letting Cheng Xiaoshi know that he will be going through workplace sexual assault when transmigrated to Emma's body? According to my understanding when someone is transmigrating to another person's body one is subscribing to experience one's lived experience, then with the vengeance for the horrible act they suffered, acting accordingly. When one is transmigrating don't you think letting one know about the experience one will be going through we are nullifying the other person's lived experience? When a person residing in center experiences a marginalized person's life ( in this case her marginalization happens because of her gender and class - both economic and social) it's difficult for the person living in the center fathom the intensity of a incident, everything isn't about textbook definitions. Moreover, did Lu Guang had the chance? Don't we think Lu Guang was helpless in that situation or is being dehumazined to a level that we are hesitant of thinking Lu Guang can have basic emotions? Or are we blaming Lu Guang for not letting Cheng Xiaoshi know about Emma's death? We all know in what condition (both mental and physical) Cheng Xiaoshi was after coming back from transmigrating into Emma's body.

Now, comes the adjective used for Lu Guang - " unhealthy" and we can also consider this as being non-concensual, abusive, obsessive kind of lover or "mate" as people like to call .. or should I say comrade? Anyway, one thing I learnt from this is that when a person is going to meet with an accident - I will first stop the speeding car going to hit the person and then let them sign the contract that will have made beforehand stating that I am allowed to save that person:⁠-⁠).! So that, the person whom I am saving don't get a guilt trip that they are being saved . As in that process I might have hurt myself and that person don't have to live through a life long guilt of being saved. Are we literally so much into the kind of media where we worship the Petrarchan trope of love that taking active action for one's love is being criminalized.

And people are so intrigued about passing value judgement about Lu Guang that he is judged merely being judged into the New Critic's way "good" or "bad"- "Is Lu Guang adding any value to our life?" "Is Lu Guang making you a good human being suitable to serve the big bens of the capitalist society?" - if not, then just tag Lu Guang as a horrible person. In the constant urge of villainizing Lu Guang, we have dehumazined Lu Guang so much that we have forgotten to see him as an individual and visualing him from a human parameter. The only request is to stop demonising him for loving, for dreaming to be with his love, for having a "queer" dream of a happy life...(⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)(⁠◔⁠‿⁠◔⁠)(⁠.⁠ ⁠❛⁠ ⁠ᴗ⁠ ⁠❛⁠.⁠)(⁠◍⁠•⁠ᴗ⁠•⁠◍⁠)⁠❤

[lyatudor]

The story collector

Chapter 14 - Invite them in

A story inspired by real events, dreams or more.

Warning 🔞⚠️: Dark horror stories with elements of death, decay, sex, drugs, alcohol, suicide, religion and overall spook factor for your reading pleasure.

Religion…

Such an utter crap fest if you’d ever seen one, because let’s face the facts for once. We are looking at the most well-known fiction book to exist and furthermore so many believe it. If one needs to shake hands with a writer to get some inspiration to rub off, it’s that one.

Born a child of none, religiously speaking, moved into a family of utter deliverance. It irks every sense that creates and makes one. From the very concept of life, being born…a miracle. Would you call a miracle a bastard child born from fucking in a barn while a family build of love and devotion struggle to have a child? Would it still be a miracle if a middle-class scum who can barely write and speak correctly comes on top while another with studies, tries and tries but doesn’t have the right words at hand at the right time?

Oh no, God guided them. They believed and still do. They…you almost vomit in the salad you’re making close to midnight because tradition dictates women sit in the kitchen and prepare everything for the following day.

The television is on, words sinking into your brain like rot that you carve out the moment it closes. Utter shit and then some when you sit, if you even do, to think about it. Honestly you had to give it out to them, churches, religion, the most profitable institution. That and prostitution. But then again whores do not run the head of everything important. No, unfortunately not. If they did things would be far more fun. If the world would burn, you would prefer a cock on the war banner instead of the makeshift image of the son of God.

The thought alone makes you crack a smile as you continue to chop vegetables, eyes lifting to look at the clock.

Almost midnight.

Usually by this hour you and the entire family would have been dressed and out at church, however by miracle alone or being too tired to function properly, this year it’s different. No one is dressed in their best clothes to go to church and freeze their asses off. You are all inside the house, drinking, talking, cooking…each to their own, which is more than acceptable in your books.

The image on the television changes once more to show the crowds gathered to accept the holy light and you all but roll your eyes in the back of your skull. Delivered by plane or it just came to exist. Utter shit. You steady your hand, continue to chop boiled vegetables because somewhere in the back of your mind the menial task is all that is needed at such a late hour. Like you’re possessed by nothingness and you absolutely love the feeling of not having to think about anything.

Of course, until the silence is broken by the church bells, hollow and oddly very loud, as if resonating all over. Those were bad enough on their own, an annoying and haunting sound. But the voice in front of you is what captures and keeps your attention.

“It is said that during this time, at midnight, when the bells ring…we invite the dead in.” the pause in the sentence is felt by your every fiber, as if your heart is in tune with everything happening, stopping and starting at the drop of a few words.

You cannot remember when the knife on the cutting board last made a sound, your hand as if going numb from sitting still for too long “You know I don’t believe in such things.” Defiance your very essence, the poison your soul loves over and over again.

Because let’s be real for a second. God and all that mumbo jumbo is something for the weak, for those with nothing, grasping as straws and whatnot. You promised one day you would read the Bible just for fun, just to sit and read and criticize every word of the world most known fiction book.

“I know you don’t believe and that’s alright, one day you’ll find a reason for everything. He waits. He knows when you’re ready.” The voice is calling out to you and yet you resent it with a cold laugh.

“The dead are dead.” yet the air around you is cold and colder still as you continue to talk “they don’t come back, they don’t haunt us. They are rotting in the earth, where we left them.”

A nod. A dry swallow “Then if you don’t want to believe today, don’t turn around.”

A glimpse, a single reflection as the television goes black, faces, countless, mouths wide and dark, calling without a sound, screaming without a whisper.

They are there.

They are waiting.

[strinak]

2024 Books

great that we've found a year worse for my mental health than 2020! anyway, this list has been typed up since January 9 and I just haven't managed to put it up.

I should really do better at getting these up bc at this point it's hard to summarize last year. I read 371 books in 2024 and have already read more than that in 2025 thus far because again, Bad Year.

Found some fun new authors. LOVED Olivia Joy, so much so I even read the kinks I'm not into. Jamie Kassel, the repressed man tearfully railing himself literally in his closet scene will always be famous. Lilo Quie isn't good but IS a good time. Sophie O'Dare, I tried the Radish app just for you. D Dove, I see you, I see your "dove scale", you are the funniest motherfucker in publishing. Crea Reitan, I love your books even though your Patreon tiers give me hives. Emmy Sanders, sex work positive queen.

Books below the cut.

JM Clarke & CJ Thompson - Rune Seeker 2

Ofelia Grand - Black Bird

EJ Russell - Assassin By Accident

Ruby Dixon - When She’s Shy

Aeryn Zaera - Toy Shop on the Pleasure Planet

Megan Derr - Night-blooming Hearts

Mary Calmes - Wintering with George

KL Hiers - Shoulda Swiped Left

Kiki Clark - The Mobster’s Mate

Vasha Crow - Perfect Prey

Jennifer Cody - (Never) Feed the Crows

Jennifer Cody - I Went on an Adventure and All I Got Was This Barbarian Orc 5

Charity Parkerson - So Pucked Up

Charity Parkerson - Pucked in the Head

Megan Derr - Mismatch, Lovematch

Isabel Murray - The Naiad’s Gift

Holly Day - The Book Dragon’s Lair

Charity Parkerson - Nothing

Jennifer Cody - A Knot with Santa

Jennifer Cody - In the Sack with Krampus

Delaney Rain - Knotted By the Wolf Prince

Delaney Rain - The Demon’s Dealbreaker

Holly Day - The Blood Witch

Holly Day - A Vampire Chew Toy

Charity Parkerson - Devoted Sinner

Charity Parkerson - Unmatched Devil

Charity Parkerson - The Warden

Charity Parkerson - Rogue

AJ Sherwood - How Tan Acquired an Apprentice

AJ Sherwood - How I Took the King on a Bone-a-Fide Quest of Piracy Piemu, & Profit 1

Grae Bryan - Fate’s Treasure

Charity Parkerson - Little Pest

Charity Parkerson - Cosmic Cardio

Charity Parkerson - Must Be Clowning Me

Amy Crook - To Admire and to Adore

Megan Derr - Hammer & Powder

Antonia Aquilante - To Love the Dragon King

Charity Parkerson - The Demon in Him

AJ Sherwood - A (Non) Comprehensive Guide to Sea Serpents

Tavia Lark - Prince and Betrothed

Charlotte Brice - Slayer

KL Noone - Apprentice’s Luck

KL Noone - The Hermit of Aldershill Manor

KL Noone - Of Starlit Balls and Starship Captains

Zile Elliven - Fated

XJ Wild - Shared By the Fraternity

Jamie Kassel - His Sex Therapist

Jamie Kassel - His Sex Therapist 2

Jamie Kassel - Daddy’s Games

Jamie Kassel - Boss Daddy

Jamie Kassel - Fireman Daddy

Jennifer Cody - The Adventure of Sterling Jones

Corey Kerr - The Second Marriage

Tavia Lark - Prince and Pawn

Zile Elliven - Revenge

Zile Elliven - A Really Gay Book

Zile Elliven - Missiletoe

Zile Elliven - Quiet

Zile Elliven - Psync

Zile Elliven - Psync 2

Keegan Kennedy - Tank Takes Charge Part 1

Aria Grace & Jena Wade - Omega for the Mafia Boss

Syn Blackrose - Tied to You

Fae Quin - The Devil Takes

Onley James - Rogue

Reg Rome - Minute Mage

Kiki Clark - A New Pack for New Year

Tessa Kane - Lone Wolf

L Rose - Protected By the Bear Shifter

Aria Grace - Wait in the Truck

April Kelley - Jonik

Roe Horvat - Alpha Kings

Charity Parkerson - His Obsession

Kiki Clark - Banger

Jennifer Cody - Fox Recruits a Mute Boy (And Falls in Love)

RS McKenzie - Blu, My Protector

Delaney Rain - The Red Dragon’s Mate

Delaney Rain - The Demon’s Mate

Grae Bryan - Johann

Grae Bryan - Wolfgang

Grae Bryan - Colin

Louisa Masters - Micah

Louisa Masters - Zachary

Mary Calmes - Tied Over

Kiki Clark - Laying Pipe

Aria Grace - Have Mercy on Me

Aria Grace - Trashed to Treasured

Aria Grace - Loved Like a Little

Aria Grace - Alpha’s Fake Omega

Jean M Auel - The Valley of Horses

Charity Parkerson - Pucking Screwed

Jennifer Cody - The Ashes of Ackonir

Sam Burns & WM Fawkes - Trickster

Sam Burns & WM Fawkes - Zephyr and the Western Wolf

Holly Day - Returning to the Werewolf

Jacey Davis - Arranged By Fate

Sienna Sway - Bait Wolf

RS McKenzie - Unexpected Fate

Aria Grace - Single Dad Alpha and His True Mate

Lilo Quie - Dette Management

Charity Parkerson - Awakening

Charity Parkerson - Afterlife

RS McKenzie - Treasuring Michael

Jamie Kassel - A Little Christmas: Noah

BT Narro & Beatrix Grinn - Resistance Above Magic

Lilo Quie - Pitching a Tentacle

Lilo Quie - Dette Forgiveness

L Rose - Protected By the Tiger Shifter

AJ Truman - The Fireman and the Flirt

Lilo Quie - Delivered to His Demon

Lilo Quie - Treasured By His Demon

Lilo Quie - Forgotten By His Demon

Lilo Quie - Not Meant for His Demon

Lilo Quie - Deep in Dette

Lilo Quie - Settling His Dette

Lilo Quie - Dette to Society

Lilo Quie - High Interest Dette

Jame Kassel - Jace’s Secret

Onley James - Paladin

Thalia Sanchez - Slashed

Anna Wineheart - Knotted By the Wolf

Anna Wineheart - Monster-Forced

Holly Day - There Will Be Aliens

Aria Grace & Jena Wade - Forbidden Omega

Joe Satoria - How to Bang a Vampire

Sedona Ashe - The Bunny Blues

Kiki Clark - Reckless

Kari Gregg - The Importance of Being Denny

Sedona Ashe - Klutz: Phoenix Down

Sedona Ashe - Klutz: Phoenix Heat

R Phoenix - Forcibly Knotted By the Shifter: Mate

BT Narro & Beatrix Grinn - Resistance Above Magic 2

Yamila Abraham - Vanquished Knight

Margaret Atwood - Cut & Thirst

Delaney Rain - Claimed By the Fox Captain

Holly Day - The Wingman

Holly Day - Squirrel Hunt

Mell Eight - Twin Elements

Amber Green - Dead Kitties Don’t Purr

Dessa Lux - The Omega’s Bodyguard

Dessa Lux - The Omega’s Pack

Dessa Lux - The Beta’s Test

Jenny Lawson - I Choose Darkness

Mell Eight - Coven

Mell Eight - Hunter

Mell Eight - Witch

Mary Calmes - Landslide

Dessa Lux - The Omegas’ Day Off

Dessa Lux - The Omega Learns a Lesson

Lilo Quie - Bit and Run

TJ Land - Tennessee Ham and Strawberry Jam

Jamie Kassel - Knot Needed

Sarah Wallace & SO Callahan - Breeze Spells & Bridegrooms

Charity Parkerson - Pucking Mess

LA Lambert - Honey and Starlight

Kari Gregg - Pretty Poison

AJ Sherwood - How I Took the King on a Bone-a-Fide Quest of Piracy Piemu, & Profit 2

AJ Sherwood - How I Took the King on a Bone-a-Fide Quest of Piracy Piemu, & Profit 3

AJ Sherwood - How I Took the King on a Bone-a-Fide Quest of Piracy Piemu, & Profit 4

AJ Sherwood - How I Took the King on a Bone-a-Fide Quest of Piracy Piemu, & Profit 5

Jamie Kassel - Designation: Submissive

Jamie Kassel - Designation: Null

Kari Gregg - Starting Over

Alexis B Osborne - Mate for the Alien Porn Star

Cassandra Gannon - Happily Ever Witch

Josh Lanyon - The Lemon Drop Kid

Josh Lanyon - 44.1644*North

Mary Calmes - His Consort

Mary Calmes - His Prince

Mary Calmes - His Realm

Mell Eight - If a Butterfly Don’t Fly

Jess Madison - Claimed By the Boar God

Sarah Honey - Contractually Yours

DN Bryn - A Better Fate

Lucy Lennox - Professor Platonic

Avery Scarlett - Knot Fit for Love

L Rose - Protected By the Fox Shifter

Trinity Black - Predatory Obsession

Kari Gregg - In the Red

Morgan Lysand - Nightmare for Hire

Nicole Forcine - Shaken Up

Nicole Forcine - Settling Down

IS Belle - Honeybloods

Lucy Lennox & Molly Maddox - HEA: Happily Ever After

CC Winters - Your Wife Comes First

Roe Horvat - Cautious Match

Kari Gregg - An Unauthorized Guide to the Hunt

AJ Sherwood - How I Took the King on a Bone-a-Fide Quest of Piracy Piemu, & Profit 6

Emmy Sanders - Teddy

Emmy Sanders - Virgin Hearts

Emmy Sanders - Tink

Emmy Sanders - Himbo

Emmy Sanders - Malibu

Jez Morrow - Force of Law

Odessa Lynne - Gay for Alex

Odessa Lynne - Of Magic and Mating

Odessa Lynne - Of Mating and Monsters

Odessa Lynne - Of Humans and Mates

Charity Parkerson - Pucking Complicated

Amanda Meuwissen - His Slender Embrace

Marina Vivancos - In This Shadow, Longing

Delaney Rain - Bound to the Tiger Scout

Matt Dinniman - Dungeon Crawler Carl

Matt Dinniman - Carl’s Doomsday Scenario

Matt Dinniman - The Dungeon Anarchist’s Cookbook

Matt Dinniman - The Gate of the Feral Gods

Matt Dinniman - The Butcher’s Masquerade

Miles English - Bog Standard Isekai: Scarred

Miles English - Bog Standard Isekai: Illusionist

Jesse Q Sutanto - The Reunion Dinner

KL Noone - Midwinter Music

Aria Grace - The Quiet Alpha and His Fox

R Cooper - Blessed

KL Hiers - Tastes Like Christmas

Ilona Andrews - Sanctuary

Cate C Wells - After the Shut Up Ring

Riley Rivers - Bad Daddy

Kari Gregg - Half a Million Dead Cannibals

Grae Bryan - Wreaking Havoc

Holly Day - Vampire Lee

Delaney Rain - Captured by the Dragon Warrior

Cassandra Gannon - Love vs the Scarecrow

CS Poe - Love, Marriage, and a Baby Carriage

Charity Parkerson - Pucking Insane

Charity Parkerson - Captivated

Charity Parkerson - Tricky

Charity Parkerson - Pucking Human

Charity Parkerson - Royally Pucked

Charity Parkerson - So Pucking Wrong

Charity Parkerson - Treat

Charity Parkerson - Pucking Mobbed

Ashley Reyes - Masked Deception

Charity Parkerson - Sugar Dom

MA Innes - His Theo

Mary Calmes - Ice Around the Edges

Charity Parkerson - Little Pest

X Aratare - The Ninth Dragon Shifter

X Aratare - The Courtship of the White Dragon

X Aratare - The Dragon King’s Challenge

X Aratare - [Dragon’s Reign 4]

X Aratare - [Dragon’s Reign 5]

Delaney Rain - Hooked on the Otter Doctor

Delaney Rain - Ensnared by the Rabbit Genius

Megan Derr - The Wrong Familiar

Riley Rivers - The Werewolf’s Dragon Defender

RJ Moray - Million Dollar Daddy

Roe Horvat - Milk

G Eilsel - Raising Hell

R Cooper - Little God

Isabel Murray - The Naiad’s Wish

Lucian Duke - Naughty But Nice

Joely Sue Burkhart - One Cut Deeper

Vaya Lure - The Tyrant Alpha’s Perfect Mate

Elliott Kay - Grand Theft Sorcery

Elliott Kay - Great Power and No Responsibilities

Ilona Andrews - Sweep with Me

Ilona Andrews - Sweep of the Heart

Ilona Andrews - Silent Blade

Ilona Andrews - Silver Shark

Ilona Andrews - A Mere Formality

Ilona Andrews - Fated Blades

Ilona Andrews - Sweep of the Blade

ME Robinson - Loremaster

JM Clarke - Mark of the Fool 1

JM Clarke - Mark of the Fool 2

JM Clarke - Mark of the Fool 3

JM Clarke - Mark of the Fool 4

Emily Antionette - Maneater

Lilo Quie - Shattered by His Alpha King

JM Clarke - Mark of the Fool 5

JM Clarke - Mark of the Fool 6

JM Clarke - Mark of the Fool 7

JM Clarke - Mark of the Fool 8

JM Clarke - Mark of the Fool 9

Patricia Briggs - Alpha and Omega

Patricia Briggs - Cry Wolf

Lee McCormick - Under Your Skin

Roe Horvat - Levity

Megan Derr - A Fragile Heart

Kitt Lynn - To Save Face

Anne McCaffrey - The Coelura

Patricia Briggs - Frost Burned

Patricia Briggs - Night Broken

Patricia Briggs - Silence Fallen

Anne McCaffrey - Dragonsong

Lilo Quie - The Last Omega in the Galaxy

Patricia Briggs - Storm Cursed

Delaney Rain - Trust in the Moon

Mary Calmes - Once Upon a Christmas Song

Brigham Vaughn - Love in the Produce Aisle

Amy Padilla - Dating a Demon

Amy Padilla - The Incubus’s Assistant

Erin R Flynn - Escaped Daughter

CJ Dragon - Dare

Jay Krauss - Steel Foundations

Jay Krauss - Runic Ocean

D Dove - His New Toy

D Dove - His Plaything

D Dove - His Possession

D Dove - His Decision

D Dove - His Good Boy

RC Joshua - Deadworld Isekai

Mell Eight - The Chef

West Greene - All His Touches

Cassandra Gannon - Seducing the Sheriff of Nottingham

D Dove - Milkie

Lynn Van Dorn - I Had My Bells Jingled by an Alien Pod Person

Erica Montrose - Heart Medicine

Shannon West - Kitt

Shannon West - Connor

Jordan Silver - Stealing My Ex

Sophie O’Dare - Bad with Love

Sophie O’Dare - Maybe Tomorrow

Sophie O’Dare - Omega on the Run

Sophie O’Dare - Desperate to Marry

Sophie O’Dare - Faking for Real

Sophie O’Dare - Claimed by the Boss

Sophie O’Dare - Caught in His Sights

Sophie O’Dare - Secured by the Buyer

KL Hiers - Cash

Pat Lewis - Snowed In and Seduced

Pat Lewis - Bet You Use My Gift

Hurri Cosmo - Baby, Think It Over

Ki Brightly & Meg Bawden - You’ve Got to Be Kitten Me

Crea Reitan - Loren

Alessandra Hazard - His Boss for Christmas

Hurri Cosmo - His Fake Boyfriend

Hurri Cosmo - The Superior Jewel

D Dove - Puppy’s Training Trouble

Crea Reitan - Stick Lessons

Crea Reitan - Neutral Zone Trap

Crea Reitan - Shiver

Crea Reitan - Starting Line

Mell Eight - Cleanly Wrong

Thea Hayworth - Integrate

Sophie O’Dare - Focused on Him

Sophie O’Dare - Love at Last

Leslie McAdam & JE Birk & Rachel Ember - TMI

Leslie McAdam - Studious

Leslie McAdam - Curious

Kiki Clark - Joyful

HJ Welch - Heaven Sent

Casualfarmer - Beware of Chicken 1

Casualfarmer - Beware of Chicken 2

Casualfarmer - Beware of Chicken 3

D Dove - Cookies & Cream

D Dove - Puppy’s Paradise

Jenny Palmetto - Sugar Baby’s Dangerous New Daddy

Chara Croft - Daddy’s Rent Boy

Chara Croft - The Daddy Upgrade

Chara Croft - In Daddy’s Care

Chara Croft - The Daddy He Needs

Chara Croft - Leaving Him Locked

Olivia Joy - Daddy’s Sunshine

Olivia Joy - His Sweet Boy

Olivia Joy - Holding Rein

Olivia Joy - Bells & Whistles

Olivia Joy - Cabernet & Encores

Jayda Marx - Boss Daddy

Jayda Marx - Big Daddy

Olivia Joy - Sounding Off

Olivia Joy - Bound to Happen

Olivia Joy - Daddy’s Surprise

Olivia Joy - Coffe and Ink

HJ Welch - Four Play

Megan Derr - Midsummer Baker

Megan Derr - Midsummer Curse

Megan Derr - Midsummer Law

Megan Derr - Midsummer Song

Megan Derr - Midsummer Moon

Jenny Palmetto - Free Use Halloween Gangbang

[anjumzm]

Midsummer Night

A Legacy of Gods Fanfic

JerCes Daughter x LanMia Son

Chapter 15

Theodore Sokolov King

I knew this day would come, but not this soon. Although I had all my ducks in a row, I hadn't expected Abazi to make his move so... recklessly. He'd spread rumors that had caused our stocks to plummet. It also impacted the deals we'd almost sealed, making our partners skeptical. If I wanted to save myself and my cousin brothers from Grandpa Aiden's wrath, I had to be quick and efficient. Given his latest move, he now knew of my plans to go against him. Previously, both Abazi and I had attacked each other in shadows, but now it was evident that Abazi had gotten impatient.

Well, time for my first move.

I typed a message to my soon-to-be brother-in-law, Aaron Volkov. "Meet me at my office."

The reply was swift and curt. "Who's this?"

"Volkovs' soon-to-be son-in-law," I responded.

The next reply was a string of curses, conveying the asshole's frustration at the entire situation. If it were any other time, I would have taken pleasure in ruffling this buffoon's feathers, but I had more pressing matters at hand.

"I've heard rumors of Abazi having something of yours... something about a black book."

That earned me a long stretch of silence. He kept on typing and erasing the message.

"No worries, take your time, brother-in-law. Considering the way you're struggling to reply, I take it it's something of value for the Volkovs. Good thing you have me on your side now, don't you think so?"

"What do you know, King?"

"Nothing as of now, but I have my men in place. Soon, I'll have the location of your 'possession'. Chances are we can recover it from Abazi once the location is disclosed." Although the book was in my possession, I couldn't possibly let Aaron know this. If I returned it, well, the only outcome would be death by the hands of Jeremy Volkov. And I wanted to live, more so now than ever before.

If only to own Aanya Volkov.

"And you're helping us out of the goodness of your heart, I assume," Aaron replied.

"Of course. Cannot let a rat manipulate my beloved fiancé's family."

"Cut the crap, Theo. What do you want?" The guy was smart when he wanted to be.

"Down to business, I like that. Well, I'll be proposing something at the next Bratva meeting. Once we overthrow Abazi's control over the southern port, I'll propose to put you in his place. You'd be the new King of the Southern port, all but in name. You see, I'm a businessman and cannot involve myself in the illegal activities of the port, but you guys can. I want to be able to do business without suffering any loss. If all goes well, you can keep 10% of the profit we make. Additionally, I'd be giving 20% to the Bratva, which is more than the measly 5% Abazi offers. Give it some thought."

Five minutes later, my phone buzzed with his reply. "OK. But before agreeing, I have one more condition to add."

"Well, go ahead."

"I want you to break off your engagement with Aanya."

That did it. It filled me with a rage like never before, with a need to maim this asshole for good. I will burn each and every one who tries to come between me and my birdie. She was mine before she knew it, and I'll do everything in my power to keep it that way. "Aaron, let me remind you that you're in no position to make demands. You see, you're missing the point here. 'You' need something that 'I' can help you get back. Even if you disagree, I have other ways to get my plan in motion. Not to mention the point that I can and would get back the black book you so desperately want. Also, what are the chances that I blackmail you once I get my hands on your book? My offer is a mere courtesy given that we're to be relatives and all. As for my engagement with Aanya, deal or not, I fully intend to make Aanya my wife. Neither you nor your family has any say in it."

I needed an outlet. Something, before I started smashing stuff here and there. I called Alejandro and asked him to arrange a boxing match as soon as possible. It was a habit I'd developed in my teens to keep whatever this thing I feel at bay. And it did wonders, the pain, the exhaustion-all of it. Previously, Uncle Niko used to accompany me, but since I fell from his grace, Dom had taken up his place. I messaged him, "Up for something fun?" "Down for it always," he replied back.

An hour and a couple of bruises later, I was sated... if only for a while. After a while, Dominic came into view.

"That was a good fight, you left quite an impression. The news will have reached the King's Mansion. Grandpa Aiden will be furious. Get ready for the consequences. I'll be ready with popcorn and stuff. I'll ask Sean to join too."

"Thanks for nothing," I replied curtly.

"Seriously, Theo, what's wrong? What triggered this? I thought we were past our teenage shenanigans. Are you okay?" "Since when are you my therapist? Trust me, out of both of us, you need to get yourself checked. I heard about your latest episode. Uncle Bran must have been thrilled. All good at home, Dommy boy?"

"Asshole. I was asking out of concern. Bet you're not familiar with the term, you psycho."

"Don't care. Be present for the next Bratva meeting. I have a surprise." I left without waiting for his reply.

I knew that Aaron Volkov wouldn't decline the offer made because I made sure that there was no other option left for the Volkovs. As expected, I found a text the next morning. "OK. I accept the deal. But no one else should know about this-neither my father, Aanya, nor anyone."

"Sure. Looking forward to working with you, Mr. Volkov."

This needed a celebration. And what better way to celebrate it than with the little bird who seemed to occupy my mind a lot these days?

I called Aanya. "Hello, Theo?" she answered, her voice curious.

"Hello, little bird. Are you free this evening?"

"Yeah, I suppose. Why are you asking?"

"Good. I'll pick you up at six" I could already picture her face, the way her eyes widened in surprise, the way her lips curved into a reluctant smile. Every moment with her was a game, a tantalizing dance that I couldn't get enough of. Her presence was intoxicating, and the more time I spent with her, the more I craved it. I was obsessed, utterly consumed by the thought of her. The idea of anyone, especially Aaron, trying to come between us was infuriating.

Time to play with my little bird. To ensnare her in a way that not even she's able to keep us apart.

[swallowedbyfandom]

Simon,

You were once a Rake of great renown so I am hoping you will have information or experience that can help me. I would go to Ant and Ben for advice but they have always mocked me for being so Green before marriage. I do not wish to give them cause to believe themselves justified in their mockeries. I apologize in advance for the uncomfortable subject matter of this letter.

Regardless of what my brothers believe I was not entirely inexperienced before marriage. I am not ashamed to admit, I visited a handful of brothels in the mediterranean. I discovered quickly that I was not comfortable sharing intimacy with a stranger. After this discovery I choose to learn from watching the girls bring each other off instead. It was certainly more expensive but Pen claimed if she could she would send those girls a thank you gift. So I consider it money well spent.

My wife like all other genteel ladies before her, was raised ignorant of what she should expect in marital bed. So you can imagine my surprise when our wedding night left me practically insensate. When I questioned her over where the hell she learned such things she presented me with half a dozen books. Having deemed it a great offense to be denied knowledge she would someday need, my wife sought a solution. My wife being the creative thinker she is, contacted a trusted third party to obtain her a wide variety of information pertaining to the carnal arts. The books are so deliciously scandalous they do not even have the authors or illustrators names attached to them.

I tell you all this so you understand we are both over achievers. We both take great pride in rendering the other stupid with pleasure. We both like to be underestimated. That last bit is of great importance. I should have known if she presented me with half a dozen books, then she likely kept just as many for herself. After all Penelope never reveals all her cards.

I had thought my reentry into our home meant she was no longer upset about my ill spoken boast at White's. I was wrong. I had forgotten that was my second offense drunkenly boasting about the virility of my seed.

There is no polite way to explain what happened. So I will try to keep it as vague as possible. My wife heartlessly took me as she pleased throughout the day, yesterday. She only allowed me to peak every third or fourth time she used me. By that evening I thought she would tire of putting me through such torment. I was wrong. My wife got her hands on an accessory that was placed at the base of my cock and around each testicle. Then she took me once more. When she freed my cock from that hellish accessory she left the ones around my balls. Then she proceeded to take me again. When she finally allowed me to peak I erupted. Never have I climaxed for so long. I did not know such a thing was possible. After freeing me completely she brought me to climax twice more in rapid succession. The last time I peaked I did not even spend myself. I peaked completely dry.

Simon have you ever heard of such a thing? Is this normal for the more exotic practices? Is this healthy? Will my body regain the ability to produce seed? Do I need to see a doctor? Did she break me? Or did I just run out of semen? Help! Send answers immediately.

Penelope assures me that I am fine. That I simply need to replenish myself. But how would she know? She has no cock! Women are built for multiple orgasms! It is to my understanding that men are not.

Once more I apologize for sharing such vulgar information with you. Please burn after reading.

Panicking,

Colin

Colin,

Good Lord, your second offense? What is wrong with you? First I must ask, do you remember who you married? Didn't Penelope brazenly proclaim Cressida Cowper a succubus of the first water, at the Queen's garden party? Her hobbies include profiting from stupidity, brain washing, and reigning terror on Parliament. Does that sound like the type of Lady that would grant forgiveness without any retribution? No it does not.

Calm the hell down. I know what you speak of. You are fine. As long as your cock does not feel any numbness or a cold sensation, you remain uninjured. Some lingering sensitivity is to be expected if she used you as often as you say. Just reframe from marital relations of any kind for the next two days. Also drink a lot of fluids. That has always been recommended to me in the past when I expended myself in such a manner.

Also I think your wife's actions should have proven that multiple orgasms are in fact possible for men. It just requires a certain level of finesse and preparation. We men are just utterly useless after. Once you regain your strength don't forget to buy that woman a tiara.

I have already burned your letter. Later I will get completely foxed to forget it.

Your favorite brother,

Simon

[thoughtfulfangirling]

Haha okay there's some stuff to talk about but I first just have to lave at The Magus's face in that last panel. He's so beleaguered at the burning of the pages of his book. WHICH IS RELEVANT.

The important thing here really is to remind you that The Magus has a spellbook and that it is within reach if not accessible. It is also important to note that Hakon is burning pages, because those lost pages will be relevant.

It's also setting up some interesting dynamics, kinda. Katharine is unhappy but now cowed. The Magus wants to do them harm with his magic for what has come of things. Robert is the most subdued here really. Hakon is taking pleasure in all of this enough that he isn't really thinking things through. A magic book? C'mon, that's got to be worth a very pretty penny. I thought he was interested in profit XD

[dragoneyes613]

A friend shared a story with me about her preteen son. “My son showed me a video, saying, ‘Mom, look how funny this is!’” She found the video somewhat inappropriate and extremely grotesque, and was shocked when she looked at her son’s face only to find that he had no negative reaction whatsoever.

I call this phenomenon the 24/7 circus, with content becoming more extreme by the year. This data stream is molding the minds of a generation and transforming what we all consider to be “normal and appropriate.”

The industry of social media is driven solely by the goal of earning profit by views. They design their products to keep their users engaged as long as possible. They make use of powerful algorithms that most adults do not fully understand. Every time you click, they collect data. They know what you want and what you lack, and are often one step ahead of your thought process – presenting you with tailor-made content that is difficult to look away from.

We are currently experiencing a technological revolution, and we have not yet begun to understand the ramifications. As much as we have all benefited from these new tools, we also have a grave responsibility to use them for good.

Fortunately, we can learn to A-D-A-P-T to the rapid changes in technology, and get on B-O-A-R-D to protect ourselves and our family.

There are several pitfalls of social media found in the acronym A-D-A-P-T:

A – Anxiety

Anxiety, which goes hand in hand with depression, has skyrocketed among adults and teens in recent years. Interestingly, this surge coincided with the increase in smartphone usage. Experts believe there are a number of factors behind this. Today, every action you take can be recorded or photographed. Once posted, your life could change drastically – for better or for worse. This lack of room for error evokes a need for perfection, which creates pressure that is paralyzing.

Additionally, notifications create a fight-or-flight dopamine response, consistent with prolonged stress.

D – Depression/Destructive Behavior

A whopping 42% of high schoolers feel persistently sad or hopeless, per the 2021 CDC National Youth Risk Behavior Survey. Teens and preteens complain of FOMO (fear of missing out). Loneliness pervades their lives, and leads to deep sadness.

Years ago, whenever I would sign into any social media platform, even for a brief moment, I noticed that I never felt good afterwards. I felt jealous, lonely, or left out. I am a confident, accomplished adult, a professional speaker and the author of two books, and the mother of five children. Yet it was hard for me to process what I had seen from others on their social media posts.

Our children’s brains are not as developed as our adult brains. Most do not have the confidence to help buffer upsetting images and reels.

Depression and anxiety also lead to destructive behaviors, another pitfall of technology. Cutting, burning, stealing, disordered eating, and pornography are trends that are on the rise amongst children. These acts are being idealized and romanticized on social media. One study reported that children’s accounts were being led to suicidal ideation and pro-eating disorder content after mere seconds on TikTok.

A – Addiction

The phone is so addictive that one study found that half of the participants would rather have a broken bone than a broken phone. The average American reportedly checks their smartphone 352 times per day.

You may wonder how this is possible. It is because we bring the phone everywhere – into the car, into bed, even into the bathroom. One in six phones were found to have fecal matter on the surface.

The dopamine loop the phone creates is real. Initially, scientists believed that the dopamine surge we got from the screen registered as pleasure in the brain. Now they are understanding that dopamine actually creates a craving connection as well. You are left wanting more after use, and unable to pull away.

P – Predators/Parent-Child Relationship Breakdown

Sexual predators thrive on social platforms. Jessie Weinberger, tech expert and author of The Boogeyman Exists: And He’s in Your Child’s Back Pocket, shared: “A 7th grade girl came to me after a talk and said, ‘I met this boy on Kik and thought he was my age. Now he has told me he’s 42 years old and he’s going to come and get me because he knows where I live.’”

If you think that you are immune to this and that it will not penetrate your inner circle, think again. There are apps you may have never heard of, like Vault. Vault is a way for children – yes, children – to secretly store their pornography. The icon looks like a calculator, but when you press the right buttons, the secret vault opens.

You may be worried about your children’s consumption of media, but surveys show that our children are just as disappointed in our usage. Children around the globe share feelings of abandonment, unworthiness, and sadness while their desperate attempts to gain their parents’ attention fall on deaf ears.

In a survey I conducted, one student shared, “We were driving, stopped at a red light. The light turned green and I told [my mother], but she ignored me because she was on the phone. So I spoke a little louder, and she got mad at me for being rude.”

T – Texting/Targeted Ads

Anything you can find on social media can be screenshot and sent via text instantly. Even if your children do not have social media accounts, they can certainly receive all of the above content on a text-enabled device.

Targeted ads are sent to you and your family members from the data collected from your clicks. Every move you make online is recorded and monetized for an ultimate profit.

While the above issues are immense, they are not insurmountable. Most of the problems can be broken down into a few key actions to remember. Get on B-O-A-R-D, and keep your family safe today:

B – Boundaries

Just like you would never consider driving without functioning breaks, so too limits give us freedom to move through life safely. Boundaries prevent extreme behavior and help you find balance.

When my son was little, he complained about my rules regarding screen time. One night I asked, “What would you think if I let you watch endless TV with no rules? How would you feel and what would you think?

I was shocked by his thoughtful response. “I would think you do not love me.”

Although it seems counterintuitive, psychologist Dr. David Pelcovitz explains, “The more a parent sets boundaries and limits, the more the kid loves the parent. I have seen it repeatedly in my practice over the years.”

Jodi Gold from Screen-Smart Parenting recommends keeping bedrooms free of technology, and advises children not to sleep with technology because it disrupts sleep patterns. Her guidelines include limiting weekday usage, and she believes parents should purchase apps themselves for regulation.

O – Oversee Children’s Usage

Most experts agree that when children begin using social media, parents need to oversee that process. You cannot just give them full access and hope they will figure it out for themselves. Digital safety expert Lori Goetz explains that just as we would not let our children wander the space outside of our homes without our supervision, we should not let them wander in cyberspace without our guidance.

Apps such as Qustodia, AURA, Bark, and Norton Family are all reputable companies that can help you monitor your child’s usage.

But remember: “We are the immigrants; our kids are the natives.” Because children can work around many of your security locks, Dr. Leora Orenbuch, clinical child psychologist, suggests utilizing the device together. “Children must learn how to live with devices. It’s like the forbidden fruit – the more you take it away without explaining why, the more they will try to sneak it in and go around whatever boundaries have been put in place,” she says. “It is important to still maintain those boundaries, but simultaneously, ask them to show you some of their texts or posts, or how to play their favorite game. Use it as bonding time to connect and develop a relationship, rather than fighting about it.”

A – Attention/Affection

Social media superficially satisfies a strong need for connection in youth today. When you think about your happiest moment, it probably has to do with connection. That is because connection is the root of all joy. The Hebrew word for happy is sameach. This can be divided into sham moach, meaning your mind is there. And where is that? With your family. If your mind is with your child and not wandering or texting, your child will feel secure and happy.

A middle-schooler shared, “Sometimes I will tell my mom a whole story when we are having a conversation. She’d be on her phone, and then say, ‘Huh?’ and I’d have to repeat it. Sometimes I have to repeat it multiple times.”

If you make yourself available and give your children attention and affection, they will be less inclined to search for it elsewhere.

R – Regulate Yourself

The best way to help your child reduce technology dependence is to model exemplary behavior. If you are constantly scrolling on social media, you cannot possibly expect your family members to keep the boundaries you have set for them. Your child will sense hypocrisy, and resentment may turn into rebellion.

The best way to modify your own behavior is to make a small change. Dr. Pelcovitz shared that he has a weakness for cheesecake. To help himself, he would create friction by double-wrapping the cake in plastic and placing it in the back of his freezer. By the time he got to it, his urge would pass. His craving subsided because it required too much activation energy to open it.

You can create friction when it comes to your phone. Right now, I am in the habit of not turning on the phone until my children leave for school. This way, I ensure that every morning they are all getting an undistracted mom. Others have a family rule of not being on the phone when walking in the door at the end of the day, so as to focus fully on greetings and checking in with one another.

Making a habit of your small acts helps to move the action from challenging to autopilot. When it becomes part of your routine, it is much harder to backslide.

D – Delay

According a New York Times article, many tech executives at Google, Apple, and Yahoo do not allow their children to have a smartphone before age 14, and are not given a data plan before 16. If technology executives ban smartphones for their children, should we not we think twice (or three times) about it?

Many experts urge parents to wait until their children are in 9th grade before giving them a device. There are support groups like Waituntil8th.com and MUST (Moms United to Stall Technology) that offer help and information for struggling parents.

Most psychologists agree that we should treat phones like we treat a drug. You cannot prevent exposure, but you can delay usage and monitor it appropriately.

When you do finally present your child with a device, it is a good idea to give them a contract, talk about the terms, and sign it together. You can establish the rules and explain the consequences for breaking them.

We can all A-D-A-P-T to the rapid changes in technology and get on B-O-A-R-D with how to manage them in our homes and lives. Start with a small pledge.

Together we can create a wave of change.

[onboarding213]

Gaming Influencers and the American Streaming Economy

Playing games nowadays may be a legitimate job with plenty of energy drinks, celebrities, and money. Recent years have seen the gaming industry expand beyond personal pleasure to become a whole new content creation and streaming business. From well-known battle royale games to crash-style entertainment like AviatorGames, gaming influencers have made their passion for playing full-fledged careers. Is a fresh American dream emerging here?

Gaming Influencers: Beyond Game Playing

To be honest, gaming influencers are not just game experts. They're like the ideal mix of a pro athlete, a stand-up comedian, and that hip buddy who always knows about the newest trends. Though they are expert performers who can have you smiling, gasping, and pounding the "Subscribe" button, they can pay the bills in-game.

Old-fashioned celebs would be envious of the following internet rockstars. Millions of viewers across Twitch, YouTube, and TikHub are under discussion here. These influencers are also live, interactive, and constantly on, unlike your favorite TV program.

The Streaming Economy: Where Dollar Signs Equate Emotes

Let us now specifically address money. The streaming economy is a full-fledged gold rush, not just some niche business. Websites aside, platforms like Twitch and YouTube Gaming are virtual towns where content producers stake their claims and mine for views, likes, and subs.

Here's where it gets fascinating, though: the money does not only go in one direction. Indeed, streamers are making money, but they are also generating employment right now. Consider it: who polishes their videos? Designers of their merchandise? Who bargains on their sponsorship agreements? It's a full ecosystem, baby, and it's expanding more quickly than a Minecraft universe.

A New Career Path: From Player to Entrepreneur

Being a gaming influencer is like the modern-day version of running away to join the circus for the generation raised with a controller in hand: only the circus is in your bedroom, and instead of lions, you're taming nasty Twitch discussions.

Let's not sugarcoat it, though: streaming is more difficult than using a dance pad to defeat Dark Souls. Thousands of streamers screaming into the abyss for every PewDiePie hope someone, anybody will tune in.

Why then do they undertake this? Initially, for starters:

1. It is easily available. Have a good PC and internet? You are half-there.

2. It is adaptable. Evening owl? Early Bird? Not important since your workplace is virtual.

3. It's inventive. Your guidelines, your stream. Want to play chess looking like a banana? Go ahead.

4. The possible payback is really large. Millions are being made by top streamers. Let that register.

The Effects on the American Economy

Here things become serious. The streaming economy is altering the work market rather than just our leisure activities. New vocations that seem right out of a sci-fi book are emerging here:

Professional esports coaches: sure, that is a real thing.

Stream overlays designers (since aesthetics counts even in cyberspace).

Virtual bodyguards to repel those bothersome stream snipers

Not less important are the knock-on consequences. Companies in gaming hardware are proliferating. Sales of energy drinks are off the scale. Heck, even chair makers are getting a piece of the pie as you cannot stream for 12 hours on a foldable chair.

Questions Not One's Asking

Let us now go to some unexplored ground. These are some burning questions that keep me up at night (of course not watching streams):

1. What occurs after aging out of gaming influencers? Is a retirement strategy just for streamers?

2. Are we building a fresh class division between those who can and cannot profit from their internet presence?

3. How can the authenticity so vital to influencer success be threatened by the development of artificial intelligence and deep fakes?

4. Given all those gaming facilities functioning around the clock, what effect on the environment?

5. Might effective gaming influencers rise to be political leaders? (Stranger events have occurred, people.)

Challenges

Not all fun and games come from being a gaming influencer (pun intended). Let's dissect some of the less glitzy components:

1. Burnout is a genuine phenomenon. Imagine always being "on," knowing that one off day can lose you followers.

2. It becomes hazy to define work from play. Where can you find escape when your pastime starts to pay for your living?

3. confidentiality? What kind of privacy? Your life starts to make sense, and that may be taxing.

4. One feels a great pressure to be relevant. The popular game today is tomorrow's old news.

5. Dealing with poisonous communities could seriously affect mental health.

Future: From Here Where Do We Travel?

Looking forward to gaming influencers and the streaming economy via our crystal ball?

1. VR and AR broadcasting might elevate immersion to the next degree. Imagine being in the game right there with your preferred streamer.

2. Schools could start offering streaming degrees. Does anyone have a Bachelor of Science in Memology?

3. The barrier separating conventional superstars from game influencers will keep blurring. Should the next great Hollywood actor begin their career on Twitch, you should not be astonished.

4. Governments striving to keep up with this new digital wild west can expect additional rules.

5. Gaming influencers may replace tastemakers, therefore influencing not just gaming trends but also popular culture as large.

Final Thought

Gaming influencers and the streaming economy are altering not just our playing but also our working, socializing, and maybe even defining success.

Perfect is what I mean. Not so sure. Is it leaving anytime soon? Not in a chance. Love it or loathe it; the realm of gaming influencers is here to stay and is leveling up the American economy in ways we are just starting to see.

So the next time someone laughs at the thought of earning a job playing video games, simply grin and remember: in this brave new digital world, the ones who know how to play the game — both on and off the screen – are the actual victors.

[destinyimage]

Silence Python Spirits: 8 Decrees that Arrest These Demonic Spirits

One day, as we were going to the house of prayer, we encountered a young slave girl who had an evil spirit of divination, the spirit of Python. She had earned great profits for her owners by being a fortune-teller. She kept following us, shouting, “These men are servants of the Great High God, and they’re telling us how to be saved!” Day after day she continued to do this, until Paul, greatly annoyed, turned and said to the spirit indwelling her, “I command you in the name of Jesus, the Anointed One, to come out of her, now!” At that very moment, the spirit came out of her! (Acts 16:16-18 The Passion Translation)

Prayer of Activation

1. Worship God

Heavenly Father, holy is Your name and greatly to be praised. You are the Father of Light and in You is no shadow of turning. I worship and adore You in Yeshua’s name, for this purpose was I created, to give You pleasure through my love and adoration. May Your Kingdom manifest in my life as it is in Heaven. Plead my cause, O Lord, with those who strive with me; fight against any entity or person who is contending against me and what is written about me in Your book of destiny. Heavenly Father, it is written in Psalm 27:6 (NASB), “And now my head will be lifted up above my enemies around me, and I will offer sacrifices in His tent with shouts of joy; I will sing, yes, I will sing praises to the Lord.” Heavenly Father, I thank You that I will never be swallowed by the demonic powers because You are the Lifter of my head. Abba Father, I enjoin my worship to the heavenly chorus of worship of Your holy angels and the crowd of witnesses, in Yeshua’s mighty name.

2. Enter the Courts of Heaven

Heavenly Father, Righteous Judge, I ask that the Courts of Heaven be seated according to Daniel 7:9-10 (AMP) and that all books related to my life and destiny be opened. I ask this in Yeshua’s mighty name. It is written: “I kept looking until thrones were set up, and the Ancient of Days (God) took His seat; His garment was white as snow and the hair of His head like pure wool. His throne was flames of fire; its wheels were a burning fire. A river of fire was flowing and coming out from before Him; a thousand thousands were attending Him, and ten thousand times ten thousand were standing before Him; the court was seated, and the books were opened.” Heavenly Father, Righteous Judge, I am requesting the privilege of standing before the courtroom of the Ancient of Days according to what was revealed to the prophet Daniel, in Yeshua’s name, I pray. Heavenly Father, I stand in Your royal courtroom because of the shed blood and finished work of Yeshua on the Cross. I have come to receive Your righteous judgment over my life against silencing the python spirit that satan has been using against me. Heavenly Father, I call upon Your holy angels to be witnesses to my lawsuit and righteous prosecution of every python spirit that is working against me. I decree and declare that every python spirit covering my spirit, soul, and body will be removed so I can achieve my God-given destiny here on earth, in Yeshua’s name I pray.

3. Repent

Heavenly Father, Righteous Judge, it is written, “If we confess our sins, He is faithful and just to forgive us our sins and to cleanse us from all unrighteousness” (1 John 1:9 NKJV). I therefore activate the law of repentance and present before this court my heartfelt repentance for my personal transgressions, and for the iniquities of my forefathers that opened the door for the python spirit to oppress my life and bloodline, in Yeshua’s name I pray. Heavenly Father, I ask that the blood of Yeshua wash away every iniquity of my forefathers that the enemy is using as a legal right to build cases against me and to bind me to the python spirit. I also repent for all self-inflicted word curses and covenants with demons that have existed in my ancestral bloodline. I am asking that every ancestral agreement with demonic powers and evil altars will now be revoked. I petition the courts of Heaven to silence their right to claim me and my bloodline, in Yeshua’s name. Thank You, Lord, for revoking these demonically engineered covenants and evil altars in Yeshua’s mighty name! Heavenly Father and Righteous Judge, it is my heartfelt desire to divorce myself from every python spirit that is operating in my life. I petition the Ancient of Days to grant me a verdict of judicial emancipation from the oppressive power of the python spirit. I receive Your favorable verdict by faith in Messiah’s finished work and shed blood.

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4. Petition the Courts of Heaven to Dismiss All of Satan’s Charges

Heavenly Father and Righteous Judge, based upon Yeshua’s finished work and my heartfelt repentance, I now move on the court of Heaven to dismiss all of satan’s accusations and charges against me and my bloodline in Jesus’s name. Righteous Judge, dismiss every one of satan’s accusation connected to the python spirit that is oppressing my life. For it is written in Revelation 12:10 that the accuser of the brethren has been cast down. So, I petition You, heavenly Father and Righteous Judge to cast down all of satan’s accusations against me and dismiss all of satan’s charges against me, in Yeshua’s name, I pray.

5. Declare Your Authority in Christ

Heavenly Father and Righteous Judge, in Luke 10:19 (NKJV), Yeshua says, “Behold, I give you the authority to trample on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing shall by any means hurt you.” Heavenly Father, as I prepare myself to pronounce powerful apostolic and prophetic decrees, I totally acknowledge my God-given authority in Christ to trample on serpents and scorpions that satan has weaponized against me and my destiny, in Yeshua’s mighty name, I pray. The Bible also says in Proverbs 28:1 (NKJV), “The wicked flee when no one pursues, but the righteous are bold as a lion.” Heavenly Father, because of my God-given authority in Christ, I am as bold as lion. No messenger of satan, human or demonic, can intimidate me. I am like Mount Zion, which cannot be moved, in Yeshua’s mighty name, I pray. I thank You, heavenly Father, that in Mark 16:17-18, Yeshua gave me the authority to cast out devils and take up serpents and to bring God’s healing power to those who are sick and oppressed. I therefore make the following decrees, completely assured of both my identity and authority in Christ Jesus!

6. Loudly Declare These Supernatural Decrees So You Can Have Your Breakthrough:

Heavenly Father I decree and declare that the power of the python spirit is completely broken over my life. I decree that I am no longer a victim of the python spirit, in Yeshua’s name.

I decree and declare that You are setting me free from every python spirit that causes physical and spiritual deafness in Yeshua’s name.

I decree and declare that the Holy Spirit is setting me free from the python spirit that has caused any kind of spiritual blindness in my life, in Yeshua’s name, I pray.

I decree and declare that the Holy Spirit is setting me free from the python spirit that would cause me not to walk in the truthfulness of God’s Word, in Yeshua’s name, I pray.

I decree and declare that as I bring my sacrificial offering into the courts of Heaven, the power of the python spirit that satan placed over my finances is now destroyed, in Yeshua’s name.

I decree and declare that the python spirit covering my mind and stopping my spiritual and mental transformation according to Romans 12:1 is removed in Yeshua’s mighty name!

I decree and declare that God is setting me free from the python spirit, which has caused me to be spiritually crippled in Yeshua’s name, I pray.

I decree and declare that everything, which has been stolen from my life because of the python spirit, will now be restored back to me, in Yeshua’s name, I pray.

7. End with Thanksgiving

Heavenly Father and Righteous Judge, I thank You that the foundation of Your throne is righteousness and justice. Thank You for giving me justice against the demonic entities behind the python spirit. Heavenly Father, I thank You that because of the finished work of Yeshua on the Cross, You have translated me from the kingdom of darkness to Your glorious Kingdom of Light! Heavenly Father, since You have adopted me into Your divine family, I thank You that You always hear me, when I pray. I thank You that every apostolic and prophetic decree that I have made has been heard. Thank You, Lord, that everything I have just decreed is on its way to full manifestation in Yeshua’s mighty name. Heavenly Father, until the manifestation, I will maintain an aggressive attitude of thanksgiving for the complete manifestation of what I have decreed today! In Yeshua’s name I pray.

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[linneatanner]

Kimberly Burns The Redemption of Mattie Silks #HistoricalFiction #HistoricalWomensFiction #WestwardExpansion #BlogTour #CoffeePotBookClub @cathiedunn

FEATURED AUTHOR: KIMBERLY BURNS It is my pleasure to welcome Kimberly Burns as the featured author in The Coffee Pot Book Club Blog Tour being held between November 28th – December 15th, 2023.  Kimberly Burns is the author of the Historical Fiction, The Redemption of Mattie Silks, released by Thomas Bard Publishing on October 25, 2023 (315 pages). Below are highlights of TheRedemption of Mattie Silks, the author bio of Kimberly Burns, and the historical research she did for her novel. Tour Schedule Page: https://thecoffeepotbookclub.blogspot.com/2023/11/blog-tour-the-redemption-of-mattie-silks-by-kimberly-burns.html HIGHLIGHTS: THE REDEMPTION OF MATTIE SILKS   The Redemption of Mattie Silks by Kimberly Burns Blurb:      SEEKING REDEMPTION, SHE FINDS RETRIBUTION In 1892, running one of the West’s fanciest brothels is a rough game. In a town filled with brazen criminals, corrupt police, zealous politicians, and morality committees, Madam Mattie Silks makes her fortune catering to Colorado’s gold and silver millionaires. Notorious crime boss “Soapy” Smith is at the top of the Denver underworld. There are no rules for Smith’s gang. They solve problems with bribes and bullets. When Mattie’s husband stumbles into Soapy’s dealings, she struggles to protect him. Gold is discovered in the Yukon and Mattie seizes the opportunity for adventure and profit. But Skagway, Alaska, is even more lawless than Denver. Mattie must use all her business sense and street smarts to safeguard those she cares about. Will it be enough? Or will Lady Justice again turn a blind eye? Based on a true story, The Redemption of Mattie Silks is an action-packed tale of a woman succeeding in a man’s world even when the cards are stacked against her. “The research on the era shines through, as do the grit and spirit of the characters. …A colorful and enthralling journey.” ~ K.T. Blakemore, award-winning author of The Good Time Girls series “A nice, nuanced portrait of the complex underworld with fine and witty turns of phrase. A great Western romp!”~ Randi Samuelson-Brown, award-winning author of The Bad Old Days series Buy Links: This title is available to read with #KindleUnlimited Universal Link: https://books2read.com/u/mlpKRv AUTHOR BIO: KIMBERLY BURNS   Kimberly Burns grew up in Colorado hearing stories about the colourful characters of the Old West. She has degrees from the University of Colorado and the University of Hartford. Kimberly is a member of the Historical Novel Society, Western Writers of America, and Women Writing the West. She lives with her husband and black Lab in Leesburg, Virginia. Her debut novel The Mrs. Tabor won numerous awards including the Western Fictioneers Peacemaker Award for Best New Novel, a gold medal for Best Regional Fiction from the Independent Publisher Book Awards, a National Indie Excellence Award, and a silver medal from the Colorado Independent Publishers Association EVVY Awards. Kimberly and her unruly heroines make for an entertaining book talk. She is available to discuss her novels with book groups in person or online. Email her at info@kimberlyburnsauthor.com. Author Links: Website: www.kimberlyburnsauthor.com Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100072454670660 Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/kimberlyburnsauthor/ Amazon Author Page: https://www.amazon.com/stores/Kimberly-Burns/author/B09G4S8N2L Goodreads: https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/21851914.Kimberly_Burns HISTORICAL RESEARCH OF THE UNDERWORLD   Painted ladies, soiled doves, jeweled birds… How do you research a historical topic that people didn’t like to talk about, referring to it in veiled terms? My latest novel, The Redemption of Mattie Silks, is based on the true story of the Old West’s most successful madam and her feud with notorious con man Soapy Smith. While over one hundred books and magazine articles were written about Smith and his gang, less was written about Mattie and her shady ladies. To learn about these gals, I had to walk the streets (so to speak.) I visited three of the four museums of Old West prostitution. I prowled the avenues and allies of Denver and Skagway, Alaska. The staffs at the Denver Public Library and History Colorado, the state history museum, were wonderful about sharing their knowledge, resources, and opinions. I found and read eleven books on the topic. Finally I googled subjects like “contraception in 1800s” and “home remedies for STD.” I’m pretty sure that now I am on a government watch list as a big weirdo. Through all this research, I did learn an eyebrow-raising a thing or two. For example, there was a strict hierarchy among the demimonde. Among those who sold themselves, parlor house fancy women sat atop that precarious pyramid. They were the most beautiful and well-mannered and were expected to be entertaining. They often began each evening acting as hostesses to gentlemen callers. In the front sitting room, they made conversation, played games, or performed music. Parlor house madams ran their businesses as efficiently as any modern corporation. Mattie Silks realized she could charge a premium for healthy, clean, nicely dressed, well-fed girls. So she purchased elegant gowns for her ladies of the evening on credit. They paid her back from their wages. Mattie also offered her employees two meals a day, provided laundry service, and had a doctor on retainer who conducted monthly exams. This 1890s version of a benefits package was far better than factory workers received. Below parlor houses were common brothels or bordellos where the women’s profit lay in volume. Living by the old adage that time is money, these gals burned seven-minute candles to signal the end of a gentleman’s visit. At the bottom the social heap, were crib girls who operated out of small rooms and streetwalkers who transacted business wherever they could. It was nearly impossible to improve one’s position on this career path. Most women “tumbled down the row,” moving to increasingly grimier circumstances as they aged and lost their good looks. Not all goodtime girls were prostitutes. Hurdy-gurdy, saloon, and dancehall girls were paid for dancing and earned a percentage from the drinks they sold. However, some saloons had rooms upstairs where girls sold their favors. As a result, dancers developed a bad reputation. The saloon girls of Cripple Creek, Colorado, were so offended by the insulting assumption they were of loose morals they banned together and formed the Dance Hall Girls’ Protective Association. They wrote letters and petitioned the local government to recognize theirs as a legitimate occupation and not a crime. It must have worked. The police stopped arresting the dancers. Old Hollywood movies glamorized and sanitized the lives of Old West working girls. In reality there were few career choices for females in the 1800s—school teacher, servant, nurse, prostitute, or wife. Although vice could pay the best, the life of a fallen angel was dangerous and short. Any woman considering a life of ill-repute had at least a thread of desperation running through her. As my character Mattie Silks believes, “Working as a madam was a profession, but working as a prostitute was an act of self-preservation.” Instagram Handle: @thecoffeepotbookclub     Read the full article

[yhwhrulz]

Today's Daily Encounter Thursday, September 28, 2023

Life in the Word

"Teach me your decrees, O Lord; I will keep them to the end. Give me understanding and I will obey your instructions; I will put them into practice with all my heart. Make me walk along the path of your commands, for that is where my happiness is found. Give me an eagerness for your laws rather than a love for money! Turn my eyes from worthless things and give me life through your word."1

In Psalm 119:16-176, we see the psalmist's description of God's word. It is a beautiful relationship he shares with God through the obedience to His word. Similar to the psalmist, an unknown author once wrote:

"This Book is the mind of God, the state of man, the way of salvation, the doom of sinners, and the happiness of believers. Its doctrines are holy, its precepts are binding; its histories are true, and its decisions are immutable. Read it to be wise, believe it to be safe, practice it to be holy. It contains light to direct you, food to support you, and comfort to cheer you. It is the traveler's map, the pilgrim's staff, the pilot's compass, the soldier's sword, and the Christian's character. Here paradise is restored, heaven opened, and the gates of hell disclosed. Christ is its grand subject, our good its design, and the glory of God its end. It should fill the memory, rule the heart, and guide the feet. Read it slowly, frequently, prayerfully. It is a mine of wealth, a paradise of glory, and a river of pleasure. Follow its precepts and it will lead you to Calvary, to the empty tomb, to a resurrected life in Christ; yes, to glory itself, for eternity."

If you, like me, have spent any amount of time reading God's word, I am sure we could think of several times where we could relate to the descriptions above. Personally speaking, I have often found comfort, guidance, and hope when spending time with God in His word. The thing is, however, that although we "know" the importance of reading God's word and the power found therein, we often neglect to make it a priority in our lives. We go through the day pulling on our own human knowledge and limited understanding to face life. This many times leaves us stressed, confused, full of regret, and with a sense of "burn out". But God did not intend for us to go through this life alone, which is why he left us his Holy Spirit as our Comforter and His Word to light our path. We can find truth and experience true joy by abiding in God's word and living in relationship with Him. However, whether we do or don't is our choice. What will you choose today?

Suggested prayer: Dear God, thank you for your Word which is where I can find all that I need to live. Forgive me for trying to rely on my own understanding more than on You. Help me make my time with you a priority, so that I, like the psalmist, can experience the beauty found in a life lived in relationship with you. Thank you for hearing and answering my prayer. In Jesus' name, amen.

Psalm 119:33-37 (NLT).

Today's Encounter was written by: Crystal B.

NOTE: If you would like to accept God's forgiveness for all your sins and His invitation for a full pardon Click on: http://www.actsweb.org/invitation.php. Or if you would like to re-commit your life to Jesus Christ, please click on http://www.actsweb.org/decision.php to note this.

Daily Encounter is published at no charge by ACTS International, a non-profit organization, and made possible through the donations of interested friends. Donations can be sent at: http://www.actscom.com

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When copying or forwarding include the following: "Daily Encounter by Richard (Dick) Innes (c) 2005-2023 ACTS International

[lukesavageblog]

Using The Internet To Make A Few Bucks

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[madamedupigeonsalon]

Psychologie : Que faire pendant les vacances ?

C est une question qu on se pose quand on arrive en vacances… que faire ??

A chaque fois que je visite une nouvelle ville , je dois faire le tour de la ville et regarder autour de moi. Je dois voir les restaurants ( la bouffe en premier , désolé ! On a tous nos priorités !) les cafés , les musées , les magasins et la plage si on est dans un pays ensoleillé.

Mais en deuxième temps , il faut avoir des livres avec pour des moments de détente . Il faut en profiter pour lire les livres qu on n a pas encore lu à la maison.

Un appareil photo ou une caméra pour faire des vlogs . J ai une chaîne YouTube, donc, je filme tout et tout ! J adore garder des souvenirs avec moi et pouvoir les regarder à nouveau. Donc , pour moi, si je peux filmer mes aventures à l étranger c est un plaisir inexplicable !

Après , les vacances c est fait pour se reposer donc si on est au soleil , le transat est le meilleur endroit pour profiter du soleil et de ses vacances . Bien sûr , il faut un cocktail ! Celui que j ai adoré le plus dans ma vie , c était à l île Maurice, le bambooshooter, un mix d eau pétillante avec fruits de la passion et glaçons , délicieux !!!

Les accessoires à avoir pour l été sont la paire de lunettes , la crème uv pour ne pas brûler sous le soleil , un magazine ( vogue , GQ, Harper Bazaar, ID magazine etc etc ) et un tapis pour méditer le matin. Et enfin , les écouteurs pour la musique entrain de bronzer.

Lieu de destination pour les vacances 2023 : Comporta ( Portugal ) , Ibiza ( Espagne) , St Tropez ( France ), Mykonos ( Greece ) , Paros ( Greece ) .

Et vous , vous faites quoi en vacances ? Et vous partez ou ?

Psychology : what to do for the vacation ?

This is a question we ask ourselves when we arrive on vacation… what to do??

Every time I visit a new city, I have to go around the city and look around me. I have to see the restaurants (the food first, sorry! We all have our priorities!) the cafes, the museums, the shops and the beach if we are in a sunny country.

But secondly, you have to have books with them for moments of relaxation. You have to take the opportunity to read the books you haven't yet read at home.

A camera or camcorder for vlogging. I have a YouTube channel, so I film everything and everything! I love keeping memories with me and being able to look at them again. So, for me, if I can film my adventures abroad, it's an inexplicable pleasure!

Afterwards, holidays are made for resting so if you are in the sun, the deckchair is the best place to enjoy the sun and your holidays. Of course, you need a cocktail! The one I loved the most in my life was in Mauritius, the bambooshooter, a mix of sparkling water with passion fruit and ice cubes, delicious!!!

The accessories to have for the summer are a pair of glasses, uv cream so as not to burn under the sun, a magazine (vogue, GQ, Harper Bazaar, ID magazine etc etc) and a carpet to meditate in the morning. And finally, headphones for sunbathing music.

Place of destination for the holidays 2023: Comporta (Portugal), Ibiza (Spain), St Tropez (France), Mykonos (Greece), Paros (Greece).

And you, what do you do on vacation? And where are you going?

Kevin Ngirimcuti

[rhetoricandlogic]

Burning Books for Pleasure and Profit

Illustrated byJuan Bernabeu

Edited byJonathan Strahan

Wed Dec 14, 2022 9:00am 6 comments 21 Favorites [+]

A talented bookbinder is tasked with creating a copy of a text so inflammatory it threatens to alter the very existence of Truth itself.

Ogyga runs pretty well everything around here, and nothing much can be done about her because her sister is the abbess of the Nine Aspects of Joy, which owns all the land from the mountains to the sea and has a larger standing army than the Archduke.

She’s about five one, fiftyish, stocky, wears her hair short; about ten years ago she really got into the Warrior Princess look, which was all the rage back then, and she’s stuck with it ever since. So she walks around town in knee-length brass wire chain mail over skin-tight black leather, a leopard-skin headband, and a paper-thin gilded brass shield about the size of a dinner-plate tied to her wrist with purple ribbon. She looks, therefore, like a clown, but appearances are deceptive. Where the people who mess with her end up is anyone’s guess, but so far, nobody’s come across so much as a tibia.

Imagine my delight, therefore, when Ogyga walked into my workshop one afternoon, just as I was trying to make the most of the last of the light. I’ve spent a fortune on light. When I came home from the war, I took over the derelict tannery on East Hill and had it rebuilt by the Duke’s own head mason, because he’s the only one who knows the trick of those tall, thin windows. For what I spent on the place I could’ve bought a warship, and in return I get on average an extra half-hour of light per day. Worth it, though. I make good money these days, when I’m not interrupted.

“You shouldn’t be doing that,” she said, glancing down at the sheet of vellum pinned to my desk. “It’s heresy.”

Full credit to her for recognizing a page of Saloninus’s Genealogy of Morals from only a cursory glimpse. “Strictly speaking,” I said, “no, it isn’t. Heresy is a perversion of the true faith. Saloninus is an atheist. He doesn’t pervert, he denies.”

“I could have you closed down for that.”

“You wouldn’t need a reason.”

She nodded. “I’ve got a job for you.”

Two salient aspects of jobs Ogyga gives people to do. One, they’re usually illegal, dangerous, or both. Two, you don’t get paid. “Sorry,” I said. “But I’m rather busy at the moment.”

Which was true. The Saloninus was a commission for a wealthy Sashan client—these days, two thirds of my work goes overseas—and I’d just mixed up an oyster-shell of Antecyrene purple. Once it’s mixed, you’ve got twenty minutes and then it sets hard as a rock, and it costs about twice its weight in silver. The price I’d agreed to for the Saloninus would mean I wouldn’t have to work again for a year if I didn’t want to. I rather like being the best.

She took a long stride forward, ripped the sheet off its pins, and threw it out the window. “No,” she said, “you aren’t.”

“My mistake.” I looked up at her. “What can I do for you?”

“I need a book copied.”

“I can do that.”

“I want it pretty,” she said. “It’s for my sister.”

“I can do pretty.”

I wasn’t amusing her. “I want skived buckskin,” she said, “double flesh side, burnished, octavo, written in majuscule cursive. Can you do that?”

“Majuscule cursive? Sure.”

“Show me.”

I took a scrap of parchment, pinned it to the desk, quickly chalked two lines top and bottom and looked around for my medium pen. I wrote your mother sucked cocks for money in my very finest majuscule cursive and handed it to her. “Will that do?”

She nodded. “That’s fine,” she said. “Now I think you’d better eat your words. Chew, don’t swallow.”

As a matter of fact, I’d eaten parchment before, in Escuivel, but that was a long time ago. While I was chewing, she said, “Go to the Hrutjolf brothers in Coppergate for pigments, they’ll be expecting you. I want nothing but the best. Ultramarine, not cerulean. Here’s nine besants for the gold.” She put down a handful of coins: very old coins. “I figure it’ll take you six weeks, including drying time. I want it sewn, not bound. I’ll get Theudemar to do the binding.”

Poor Theudemar. Actually, under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t let him bind used cabbage leaves, let alone anything I’d worked on. “Fine,” I said with my mouth full. “Six weeks is pushing it a bit.”

“Work quickly,” she said. She unlaced the toy shield. In the hollow of the boss was a brass tube, six inches long, an inch wide. They don’t make that sort of brass anymore. Not since the Empire fell and we had to start getting all of our copper from Permia. She put the tube on the desk in front of me. “You can read Dejauzi.”

“No.”

“Yes you can,” she said accurately. “Oh, that’s right, I forgot. My sister doesn’t know Dejauzi, so you’ll need to translate it.”

I gazed at her. “Anything else?”

“No, I think that about covers it.” She laced the toy shield back onto her wrist. “Not a word to anyone, got that? I want it to be a surprise.”

My mouth tasted of ink. “Scouts’ honor.”

“You’d better get started. Let me know when it’s done.”

You have absolutely no idea what we were talking about. Translation as follows—

Essentially, we write on animal skins. Buckskin is reckoned to be superior to cow, sheep, or pig, though in my opinion the best stuff is nine-week-old bull calf. Skived means the skin is split lengthways—a hell of a job with buckskin, calling for a keen eye, a razor-sharp knife, and rock-steady hands. Double flesh side: you get a much better writing surface on the flesh side, as opposed to hair, but when you’re writing a book rather than a scroll you use both sides of the page. Therefore, to get the best possible surface, you skive your parchment really, really thin, discard the hair side, and then glue two splits together with the flesh sides facing outwards. Burnished means each sheet is rubbed for about an hour with a glass rod, to close the fibres up tight and stop the ink from seeping into them. Octavo means small, about the size of a brick. Ultramarine and cerulean are both blue paint. Cerulean was invented by Saloninus himself and costs a fortune. Ultramarine costs twenty times as much, because it’s ground-up lapis lazuli and is only found in one mountain in a far-off land of which we know little. Besants are gold coins issued by the Emperor out of the purest gold the world has ever seen. It’s been three hundred years since the Empire fell, so besants aren’t easy to come by. What you do is, you beat them out on a mirror-polished anvil with a mirror-polished hammer until you get gold leaf. Try it with anything less fine, such as the garbage that passes for gold currency these days, and the copper the gold is alloyed with work-hardens and splits.

Talking of translation: I learned Dejauzi in Escuivel so I could talk to the guards in the prison where we ended up, three hundred of us, all that was left after the Battle of the Field of Lilies. After I got out I learned the written language, which is significantly different; the man I was sold to paid for me to learn, and also for my lessons in bookbinding and illumination. That’s why I’m the best, on this side of the Friendly Sea, at any rate. I spent seven years copying manuscripts in a Dejauzi scriptorium, which is the finest education anyone could ask for. If you didn’t produce work of exquisite beauty they flogged you till your bones showed through, but you got to read some very interesting books. When I escaped, I took with me a copy of Genseric’s Principles of Mathematics, which only exists in the Dejauzi translation. When I reached Scona, I sold it for enough to set up my shop. I was robbed, by the way, but I’m not bothered about that.

By the time I’d gotten past the Ogyga-induced shakes, the light had failed, so I lit my lamp. It’s a special lamp. At least, the lamp is nothing out of the ordinary, but next to it I’ve got a blown glass sphere filled with water, and behind it there’s a genuine Dejauzi silver mirror. I paid sixty gulden for it. Like I already told you, I spend a lot of money on light.

I picked up the tube and looked at it closely. Old brass is soft, and the inscription was so badly worn I could barely read it; also it was demotic minuscule, which is a bitch of a script to write or read. It died out five hundred years ago, and good riddance. It said: slot 412, shelf 8, case 4, row 336, room 71 Old Building, West Quad. You know what it’s like in midwinter, when it’s so cold, anything metal sticks to your fingers hard enough that you can tear your skin if you try to pull away? Actually it was summer, but I took my hands away and let it lie on my desk. I know where you’ve been, I said to myself. I thought I’d seen the last of you.

That said, I was on the clock, so I couldn’t afford to waste time on traumatic flashbacks or survivor’s guilt. I picked it up again in my left hand and used my right little finger to poke the tight roll of paper out of the tube.

That’s right: paper. My colleagues in the trade have only heard of it, but I’ve seen it, handled it, hurt my eyes trying to read it, in Escuivel. Five hundred years ago they still knew the trick of making the stuff, by mashing up about a million tons of some reed that grows in the marshes of Blemmya, then spreading out the goo on silk screens, or something like that; in return you get one sheet, about the size of a goatskin. Compared with parchment, paper is rubbish. Over time it gets brittle, like dried leaves. One time back in my master’s shop we got this priceless manuscript to copy. It came in a gold tube encrusted with diamonds and rubies, but when we pushed it out and tried to unroll it, the stupid thing disintegrated, more or less shattered into little flakes, and all we ended up with was a heap of tiny bits. I happened to overhear my master getting yelled at by the owner (so did everyone in walking distance of the city) and apparently it was the only surviving copy of the love sonnets of Raimbaut de Utancour. At the time I remember laughing like a drain. Being a slave does that to you.

Paper: an extra level of joy. I looked around for my little lead weights, the ones I use for weighing out the very expensive pigments. With two of them I pinned down one end of the scroll, and then slowly, painfully began to straighten it out, expecting it to snap at any moment. Every two inches or so I added more weights, until I ran out and had to use Ogyga’s besants.

Tiny, tiny writing. Dejauzi is murder at the best of times. They don’t have proper letters, just squiggles that all flow into one another: marvelous for imaginative calligraphy (a page of the best Dejauzi formal hand is a thing of beauty and a joy forever regardless of what it actually says), but no fun to read by lamplight when you daren’t touch the manuscript and you’ve got lead blobs covering up half the words. I felt like I was nerving myself to stick my hand—no, my mind, which is so much softer and more vulnerable—into a patch of brambles or a clump of nettles; tangled tendrils of meaning that which would rip me to shreds.

In Varit, they have scribes who make really quite passable copies of manuscripts despite the fact that they’re illiterate. Quite true; they can’t read their own language, let alone anyone else’s. But put down a hymnal or a missal in front of a Varith scribe and a week later you’ll be handed something remarkably similar, at a fifth of the cost of having it copied over here. The pictures will be almost but not quite identical—something weird about the eyes, a strange drawn look in the faces, like all the angels and saints are in the early stages of mountain fever; and you start to read and everything’s fine and perfectly normal, and then you come across something that looks like a word, but isn’t. Sometimes, if you hold the book at arm’s length, you can get an intuitive feel of what the word is; sometimes not. The point being, for a Verith scribe this job would be just another day at the workbench. He’d be safe, immune, incapable of catching anything, no matter what the words turned out to be.

The standard of living in Verit is the lowest on Earth, and life expectancy there isn’t wonderful. If I were Verith, I’d have died five years ago. I guess it’s all a matter of perspective. The dead don’t suffer or feel pain, but they’re dead. Pull yourself together and read the damn manuscript.

So I read it, or at least the first line. That was enough.

Escuivel is a Dejauzi word. It means over there. To the Dejauzi, that meant on the far side of the desert and the mountains. To us, it meant across the Friendly Sea. In any event, Escuivel is by definition a long way away, wherever you start from, a place you get to after severe hardship. Robur or Dejauzi, it’s a place you went to for a purpose: the purpose being to kill people.

We went there because it’s a holy place, where the Prophet had his vision of the Queen of Heaven and wrote the sacred book. The Dejauzi went there for roughly the same reason; same prophet, same Queen of Heaven, same vision, almost but not quite the same book. We felt that it was vitally important that the holy places should be safeguarded from unbelievers and heretics. The Dejauzi thought the same, but they got there first. Before they arrived, Escuivel was a province of the Empire, marginally productive and desperately poor because of nine centuries of Imperial taxation. The Dejauzi slaughtered the Imperials in the cities and took over their plantations. The slaves carried on being slaves, but the Dejauzi were better masters; they understood the old fiscal maxim that says, the good shepherd shears his flock, he doesn’t skin them.

Then we turned up. The thing about war is, it doesn’t make anything better. We lost the war, of course, but not until it had made a real mess of Escuivel. We burned some of the cities, they burned the rest. We trashed thousands of acres of farmland so they’d be useless to the enemy, so did they. It gets very cold there at night; I can remember the sheer bliss of sitting close enough to a fire of olive trunks that I could feel my skin scorch. I can also remember the olive harvest back home, when I was a kid, and we worked like lunatics from dawn to dusk knowing that a good crop would make the difference between being able to pay the rent and getting thrown off the farm. Vines and olives are all that you can grow in most of Escuivel. Vinewood makes good fuel too, but olive is better.

I went to Escuivel when I was sixteen. I did five tours, which is one more than anyone else I’ve ever heard of. Then we had the big battle, and I ended up learning calligraphy. For a long time, I was pretty sure I’d escaped from Escuivel and the Dejauzi, but now I’m not so sure.

I considered my options.

Ogyga is thorough, but I didn’t think she’d have gone to the trouble and expense of posting a goon outside my door to make sure I didn’t make a run for it; make that two goons, since I have a back door. I had forty gulden cash in the studio strongbox, plus the nine besants she’d given me for gold leaf; call it a hundred gulden, which is a lot of money, objectively speaking. A hundred gulden would get me a boat trip to Scona, with enough left over to hire a studio, slap a coat of distemper on the walls, and buy timber to build myself a desk. When you’re the best at something, you aren’t tied to one place. In five years, I’d be comfortable again, maybe even prosperous.

I’d more or less resolved to do that when the question occurred to me: Do I take the book with me, or do I leave it here?

I’d confronted a similar choice when I left Escuivel, and on that occasion the answer was a resounding yes. The circumstances now weren’t all that different. The book, looked at objectively, was worth money—a lot of it, quite possibly all the money in the world. If I stole it and took it to Scona and sold it, naturally Ogyga would put a colossal price on my head; but if I sold the book I could afford to buy several armies.

At which point, the penny dropped. It hit the ground like a meteorite, gouging out a vast crater. Ogyga couldn’t read Dejauzi; neither could her sister. Not many people this side of the water can. She didn’t know what the book was.

Think about it. If she knew what it was, would she have left it with me, just like that? Hardly. She’d have had me picked up and all my kit collected from the studio. I’d have been taken to a safe place where there’d be no chance of me getting out or anyone else getting in, and I’d have done the job there. And afterwards? No afterwards for me, most likely.

Think some more. Ogyga had no idea what she’d gotten ahold of. Presumably she thought it was just some Dejauzi nonsense, a rarity, the sort of thing that would appeal to her bookish sister—but most of the value of the gift would be in the exquisite calligraphy and the heartbreakingly lovely illumination. Hence me, rather than some unimaginative soul already on the payroll, who wouldn’t have to be disposed of afterwards.

Which added another option. I looked at the lamp.

If you want light, you need to have fire. Fire is all very well in its way, when it’s properly contained and under control. Let it loose, though, and you have problems. In Escuivel I’d been guilty of letting fire get loose on a number of occasions—barns, houses, villages. Once fire slips its leash, it’s very hard to know what’s going to happen next, though you can be fairly sure it won’t be anything good. I’ve always been scared stiff of fire in my studio, because there’s so much hopelessly flammable stuff there—parchment, oils, spirits, you name it. All it would take would be for a lamp to topple off a shelf, hit the floor, smash—

Even Ogyga couldn’t blame me for that. Well, she could; but she’d know in her heart that I hadn’t done it on purpose, because why would a prosperous tradesman incinerate his workshop and entire stock in trade? Just to get rid of one old book—a rarity, sure enough, but just some old Dejauzi thing, and the practical upshot would be that her sister would have to make do with face cream or some nice cushions for her birthday. And the book would be gone.

I picked up the lamp.

There used to be a library in Paulisper, the regional capital of northern Escuivel under the Empire. The Imperials claimed that the library held a copy of every single book ever written; more than five thousand.

That was three centuries ago. There are considerably fewer books in the world these days. A year or so back I asked the abbot of the Resilient Hope how many were left. He thought about it for a moment and said, Maybe eighteen hundred. Personally I think his estimate was on the low side. A few of the books we’ve lost in the West still exist in translation on the other side of the Friendly Sea; Principles of Mathematics, to cite just one example. Add those in and we could be looking at over two thousand. Even so. That’s a dead loss of well over half of the human race’s collective memory. If a horse were that sick, you’d cut its throat.

The Library of Paulisper burned down. We say the Dejauzi did it. The Dejauzi say that it was the Imperials, when they briefly managed to liberate the city by bombarding it with incendiaries. I guess at this remove the truth will never be known. It went up in flames, a long time ago, and I don’t suppose it really matters any more who did it.

In Echmen, where the science of medicine is miles ahead of anything we can do nowadays, they routinely cut into people’s heads and snip out bits of their brains. It’s called trepanning—we did it in the West, back in Imperial times, but the knowledge of how to do it is lost, ashes—and the Echmen say it’s no big deal, if you know what you’re doing. Which makes me wonder: Could a really skillful Echmen sawbones get into your head and find the place where all the memories are stored? If you paid him enough money, could he pare away the stuff you really wish you couldn’t remember? I’d pay top dollar for that, to be rid of Escuivel and various other related issues. Raising another interesting hypothetical question: If you don’t remember something and neither does anyone else, did it ever happen?

Escuivel is a very old country. People have lived there for a long time. A lot of the coastal plain is desert, though they reckon it used to be fertile arable land, before the Imperial taxes drove the farmers away and goatherds moved in, and their goats ate all the grass that held the soil together, and the wind blew it away. Anyway; the coastal plain is dead flat. The only things sticking up out of it are low hills, with a footprint of anything from three to ten acres. But they’re not hills. They’re where cities used to be. And, from time to time, bad people came along and burned the cities down, for various reasons now forgotten; but humans are resilient creatures, so after a while they rebuilt the cities on top of the ashes—and then they got burnt down again, and were rebuilt, and burned down, and were rebuilt, until by the time the last city-dwellers were slaughtered and burned and there was nobody left to rebuild, the city was situated on top of a substantial mound. All that was a very long time ago, and we only know about those cities because from time to time people have dug into the hills and found ruins. Some of the ruins have writing on them, but nobody can read it. We have no names, no history, no explanation of what happened or why; just a hill of rubble and bones and ashes. Nobody remembers. If it weren’t for farmers digging into the mounds in search of building stone, we’d never have known they ever existed.

I considered the lamp, and the very fragile strip of paper. I didn’t want to, but I had to ask myself: Whose side are you on?

Another option. Burn down my workshop, but keep the book.

I put the lamp down carefully. As I think I mentioned, I have a lot of money invested in my studio, and it was money earned the hard way. Setting light to the years I spent in Escuivel wasn’t something I was prepared to do unless I absolutely had to.

I thought about it some more. Six weeks Ogyga had given me. Those Echmen doctors I was telling you about are so smart they can predict how long you’ve got to live when you’re really sick. They look at you, feel your pulse, make you stick out your tongue; then, three months, or nine weeks, with absolute certainty and precision. Six weeks. Well, I thought. A lot can happen in six weeks.

First thing in the morning, before it was light enough to work by, I went to see a friend of mine. I’ve known her for years. We met in Escuivel.

“You,” she said. “Get out.”

“Don’t be like that,” I said.

“Piss off.”

Unlike me, Gaulasia didn’t volunteer to go to Escuivel. She was part of a shipment, bought cheap at the Corbo brothers’ going-out-of-business sale. When the smash came, just before the Field of Lilies, there were only so many places on the last ship out. A berth on the ship (translation: standing room, if you stood on one leg) cost forty gulden, which was thirty-nine gulden more than she had. The alternative was to stay in the city and wait for the Dejauzi to show up. It so happened I had thirty-nine gulden. Gaulasia caught the boat; I stayed, and having nothing better to do, I went to the Field of Lilies with my pals. When she got home, Gaulasia made up a new name and set up on her own account, putting into practice some of the advanced business methods she’d learned in Escuivel. She’s done well for herself. It’s not easy making a living if you’re a girl in this man’s town, unless you’re an actress or you work in the hospitality and entertainment sector, or your sister’s the abbess. But Gaulasia owns five large tenement buildings, half a ship, a quarter of a slate quarry, and a vineyard, besides her premises in Fishgate and the stock in trade.

“I need help,” I said.

She shook her head. “Ogyga’s people came round,” she said. “According to them I don’t know you. Get lost.”

Oh, I thought. Even so: “That’s not strictly true,” I said. “I do know you. For one thing, I know you’re really called Gaulasia.”

There are laws about slaves; silly laws, but still laws, for all that. Unless you can produce a valid certificate of manumission, you stay property. Who’d own her, given that her master died unpleasantly in Escuivel, I really couldn’t tell, but there’d be someone, count on it.

“Arsehole,” she said.

“Through circumstance,” I said, “not choice. Well?”

“What do you want?”

Gaulasia knows everybody. And quite a bit of what Gaulasia knows about people, people wouldn’t want known. Accordingly, I was granted an interview with the City Prefect.

After dark, naturally. For one thing, I couldn’t afford to waste the light. That morning, after I got back from seeing Gaulasia, I started work on the book. Fortunately, that didn’t necessitate me reading any of it. I launched into a very ambitious and truly gorgeous title page; an Ascension, with a gold leaf sky, the Invincible Sun front and center, flanked by saints and adoring angels: you can’t go wrong with an Ascension, I always say, and I can do them in my sleep. That took me the morning. In the afternoon I had to start on the text proper, so I illuminated a T. I’m good at Ts, and since I was translating the text, I could make sure the first word began with one. I don’t employ many staff, but I was prepared to bet any money that at least one of my people worked for Ogyga. I wanted her to hear that I’d started work and was well under way.

Another reason for meeting the prefect after dark: in the dark, people can’t see you so well.

“I’ve heard of you,” he said, looking at me down about a mile of very straight nose. “What the hell do you want?”

Apart from the nose, which would’ve been worthy of comment in any company you care to name, there wasn’t a great deal to him. He was sixtyish, short, thin, arms and legs like sticks, bald head, little wispy beard neatly trimmed. Rumor has it he’s killed more people than the plague. Mind you, rumor has been known to exaggerate.

“Nothing much,” I said. “Actually, I want to do you a favor.”

“Really.” One of nature’s skeptics. “What did you have in mind?”

“I want to help you stay in office for at least the next eighteen months, until your term runs out. After that I guess you’ll probably want to retire and move a long way away, where there’s no extradition. But until then, I want you to be able to carry on and sleep easy in your bed, knowing that your secret is absolutely safe.”

He looked at me, and I had a feeling that for once, rumor was being strictly accurate. “Which secret would that be?”

I told him. I won’t tell you, because I believe in discretion and keeping my promises. Besides, what do you care about corrupt accounting practices in a distant city that you’ve probably never been to? He nodded. “That secret.”

“Are there others?”

“No. What do you want?”

His eyes told me I was dead; not a threat, a prediction. No, less uncertain that that, a forecast. I suppose it ought to have chilled me to the marrow, but it didn’t. No big deal. After all, to all intents and purposes I died in Escuivel. Everything I’ve done since then is just extended post-mortem reflex. “Ogyga’s head on a spike,” I said.

He pursed his lips. “That would be nice,” he said. “But I fancy you’re being unrealistic.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “Think of an oak tree.”

“Must I?”

“Oh, I think so. An oak tree is strong, you can’t push it over. Not unless you’ve chopped four-fifths of the way through it with an axe.”

He considered me, as though I were pure mathematics. The fact that I knew his secret, one of his secrets, suggested that I wasn’t quite as much a fool as I looked. “People who stand under falling oaks get squashed,” he said. “I can’t say you’re filling me with enthusiasm.”

“Then I’ll level with you,” I said. “There’s a job she wants me to do. I don’t want to do it. As far as I can see, the only way I can solve my problem is if Ogyga dies. Me dying, incidentally, won’t solve a blessed thing. If it was as easy as that, I’d happily hold still and let her kill me. Unlike you, you see, I’ve got nothing to lose.”

He sighed. “People like you give me a headache,” he said.

“We’re a nuisance,” I conceded. “But we tend to self-destruct, so that’s all right. Here’s the deal. If you help me get rid of Ogyga, as soon as she’s dead and feeding the magpies, I’ll take the written proof of your defalcations out of the very secret hiding place known only to my closest friends and give it to you to burn, and then you can have my throat cut, I won’t be needing it anymore. How does that sound?”

“Melodramatic,” he said. “What did you have in mind?”

Some documents you fight to keep from the flames, others you create on purpose to be burned, once they’ve fulfilled their purpose. I don’t suppose the fire cares, one way or the other.

All this fuss, you’re saying to yourself, over a silly old book of scripture. I remember thinking something like that when I put the Principles of Mathematics in front of a scholar, when I finally reached Scona after my escape. “What’s it worth?” I asked him.

He looked at me. He saw a thin man in rags. “Everything,” he said.

In the event I didn’t get everything, nowhere near it. I got twelve hundred gulden; a lot of money, but not quite everything. In return, the West got the basics of scientific method, which it had carelessly mislaid a thousand years ago and had been muddling along without ever since. Not a bad deal for all concerned, except that if I had my time over again I wouldn’t have parted with it for a trachy under five thousand.

Principles of Mathematics is a book that makes things better, or so the scholars tell me. I wasn’t sure the same thing applied to the paper roll Ogyga had left with me.

I only needed to read the first line; actually, the first three words, In the beginning. That, and the age of the paper, and the provenance stamped on the tube. In the beginning is the opening of the holy scriptures according to the Dejauzi. Our version says roughly the same thing, but the words and some of the inferences are slightly different; it starts with On the day. We declared war on the Dejauzi and invaded Escuivel because we believed that their version was a heretical forgery, concocted by an opportunistic fake Messiah with an agenda, three hundred years ago, when the Empire fell. But the brittle, frail little roll of paper Ogyga thrust upon me was older than that—seven hundred years old? Probably older. It came in an Imperial brass tube, stamped with an Imperial librarian’s reference. And it wasn’t in Robur, it was in Dejauzi.

You’re probably way ahead of me, but I’ll spell it out for you. This miserable little object proved, beyond reasonable doubt, that the Dejauzi were right and we were wrong; that they were orthodox and we were the heretics; and that Escuivel, where I lost my soul and died, was at best a ghastly misunderstanding, at worst the biggest crime against true religion ever perpetrated.

Well, that cleared one thing up. Ogyga had no idea what she’d gotten. A copy was worthless, devoid of any evidential value; also, as far as Ogyga’s sister the abbess was concerned, an abomination, since it meant that her prestigious and amazingly lucrative job was a farce. If Ogyga wanted to do something nice for her sister’s birthday, she’d burn the scroll and sprinkle the ashes on the sea.

Fine, I thought. I can get myself off the hook easy as pie by making something up out of my head and pretending that my nonsense was a true translation of what was on the scroll. But what then? Ogyga would want the scroll back. It would continue to exist, locked away in a small cedarwood box in a treasury somewhere.

Locking things away sounds great in theory. You don’t kill them, which would be drastic and inhumane; also irreversible, because something killed is something gone forever, and it might turn out that you were wrong. Instead, you put them in a safe place where they can’t get out and nobody else can get in.

But things have a habit of escaping. Fire, we’ve already seen, can get out of and into all sorts of places it shouldn’t be allowed to go. By the same token, I escaped from Escuivel. And the implications of the little brass tube and its contents—not something you’d want to leave lying around.

Still fine; I could destroy the bloody thing. That would probably cost me my life, but as I think I may have mentioned, I died in Escuivel, so no big deal. But that would be—well, irreversible; for me, of course, and also for that funny little thing called Truth.

See above; if I forget something and so does everybody else, did it ever happen? A brush with a lamp flame, and the truth about the holy scriptures would be forgotten, forever. It would never have happened. And we’d have been right to invade Escuivel, even though we lost.

I looked at the pathetic little strip of paper. For two pins, I’d have burned it then and there. The trouble was, I didn’t have two pins handy. You never do when it matters.

Which only left Plan B—

My mother didn’t raise me to be no translator. It’s a messy job, compromise after compromise on top of compromise. It’s like carrying water in a sieve, all those tiny holes through which meaning can leak out. I stuck with it, though, the way I stuck with the long march to the Field of Lilies, across the desert, in boots that had no soles and which were the wrong size to start with.

Two days later I had a text. I wrote it on scraps and skivings, in a hurry. I’m probably the best calligrapher in the West, but unless I take trouble, my handwriting’s so bad that even I can’t read it.

Now, then; let’s turn this sorry object into a book fit for a pontiff.

I make my own gold leaf. Nobody else has the patience or the skill, not on this side of the Friendly Sea. The crucial moment is when you’ve beaten it so thin you daren’t lift it, because its own weight would be enough to tear it. That’s where everybody else gives up. I carry on hammering, one more pass. One more pass than is necessary, my rivals tell me. Look at their work and mine and tell me I’m wrong.

I mix my own colors; hours of miserable work, blistered palms, eyes watering and lungs burning from the poisonous fumes of the acids. I learned how to make the very best colors in Escuivel, where they recognize that, compared with absolute beauty, human life is of no account. After all, my tutor told me, the finished article will exist forever, treasured and preserved in a reliquary. So what if making it kills you? You’re a small price to pay for something like that.

I make my own brushes. The very best, for fine work, is the pin-feather from a woodcock’s wing. What’s a woodcock? It’s some bird that flutters aimlessly about up North somewhere. I’ve never seen one and I don’t consider that the deficiency has blighted my life beyond all hope of recovery. The only bit of a woodcock that’s any earthly use to anyone is the one tiny feather, about as long as the fingernail on your little finger. The rest of the bird you throw away. See above; small price to pay.

The very finest kit and materials will only take you so far. The rest has to come from inside. That suggests that inside me there’s a vast treasury of sublime beauty. You wouldn’t think it to look at me, and I sometimes wonder where I keep it all; next to the gallbladder, maybe, or tucked away behind my appendix. In Echmen, they execute noblemen by making them drink forty-year-old claret with a sheet of the very best gold leaf floating on the top. The gold leaf is indigestible; after a bit it clogs up your internal organs, and you die. I think there’s a lot of gold leaf inside me, ever since Escuivel.

It’s the last pass that makes all the difference, in my opinion. I’d had the feeling ever since I got home that I daren’t move, because if I tried to, I’d break under my own weight. Then Ogyga gave me one more hammering, one more than was strictly necessary, and after that I reckoned I was perfect.

And so it proved. I do good work, but the book I painted for Ogyga was something else. Funny, really; the book I was copying was an abomination. It made a mockery of everything I’d believed in when I joined the queue to enlist, and everything that happened in Escuivel. Twenty years ago I’d have told you that the Invincible Sun guided my hand—to Him, not me, be the glory. Yes, well; I grew out of that in Escuivel, where the Invincible Sun beats down hot enough to strip your skin off, in ridiculously thin shreds, like gold leaf gone wrong. If He inspired me, then He was being funny at my expense; this book is My true scripture, and you clowns got it all wrong. But I don’t think it was that. I think I did my best work ever because I knew it had to be right, not just good but overwhelmingly good, so beautiful that you couldn’t bear to be in the same room with it for very long, but when you left the room your heart would break. After all, I was making a weapon. Weapons have got to work, or where the hell are you?

I finished with a whole day to spare. I allowed myself the indulgence of spending that day looking at what I’d just made, since it was very likely that once I’d delivered it, I’d never see it again.

Quite early in the proceedings I’d realized that what I was making was something out of the ordinary; a possession for forever, something that would still be around in a thousand years, still communicating its message to anyone rash enough to come close enough to see it—a bit like the mad priest who toured the nations of the West preaching the holy war, and we all flocked to listen, and were never the same again. So I decided I’d put as much of myself into it as I possibly could. There are five battle scenes in Scripture, as you know; so I made them all into moments from the Field of Lilies, the bits I remember, every night when I close my eyes. I decided that Heaven would be the workshop where I learned my trade. Fifty angels sit in front of a high window, copying the Holy Word, illuminating it with Truth and Beauty. One of the archangels is Ogyga; not the way she really looks, but how she imagines she looked when she was seventeen; I felt I owed her that, for giving me the opportunity to do my best work. It’s a longstanding tradition in the business that the artist turns the Man of Sorrows into a self-portrait, one of the few perks we get. The hell with that, I thought; too obvious. So I made the Man of Sorrows one of my pals from the war, and put my own sorry face on the Invincible Sun at the moment of Transfiguration. Why the hell not? Nobody will ever know but me, and once I’m dead and gone it’ll never have happened.

She was there when I woke up, standing over me. “Well?” she said.

I’d fallen asleep at my desk. The book was on the stand in front of me, covered with a cloth. “All done,” I said. “Want to see?”

She nodded, and I lifted the cloth. I’d left it open at the Judgment. She glanced at it. “It’ll do,” she said. “Where’s the box?”

“What box?”

Scowl. “Haven’t you made a box to keep it in?”

“I’m not a carpenter. Make your own stupid box.”

She sighed. “No box,” she said, “no fee.”

“You were never going to pay me anyway.”

She turned the page. After the Judgement came the Harrowing of Hell. I’d sort of let myself go a bit on that one. She blinked. “In that case, get me a bit of silk or something to wrap it in. I don’t want it getting wet if it rains on the way home.”

“What makes you think I’ve got any silk?”

She gave me a furious glare and untied her scarf. “Wrap it in that,” she said. “Come on, I haven’t got all day.”

She took the original scroll with her. I had a torrid couple of minutes getting it back into the tube. I was petrified it’d crack or crumble, but it went back into solitary confinement like an absolute lamb. I told her to be careful with that, old paper’s very brittle. She gave me her oh-for-crying-out-loud look and stuffed the tube in her sleeve. Very valuable, I added.

“Really?”

“Oh yes,” I said. “Worth a great deal of money, to the right buyer.”

She frowned. “How much?”

“A grand,” I said, “maybe more. Maybe fifteen hundred, in Sashan.”

“I’ll bear that in mind.”

She didn’t need anything else from me, so she left. When the door closed behind her I sat down in my chair and stayed there for two days, shaking.

Ogyga gave my book to her sister, the abbess, on her birthday. About two minutes after she’d handed it over, and her sister presumably said something like, that’s nice, the door flew open and in burst a dozen soldiers. They were officers of the Diocesan Guard, reporting directly to the cardinal. They seized Ogyga, her sister, and the book and took them all down to headquarters, where they locked them away in storage, pending investigations.

My pal the City Prefect had done what I asked him, to the letter. A couple of days later I duly turned up at the prefecture and testified on a stack of scripture that Ogyga had hired me to forge the manuscript. Well, I qualified, hired isn’t quite the right word, since it implies a transfer of funds. Threatened me with a slow and agonizing death would be nearer the mark. Quite so, said the chairman of the tribunal. Do go on.

Forging the manuscript, I told him, was the biggest challenge of my career. Only I could have done it, because I’d seen and handled ancient paper documents in Escuivel. I told him how I’d brought a small quantity of antique blank paper back with me when I escaped. I explained how I made the scroll brittle and crisp by cooking it in a covered dish over a charcoal fire, then mixed the ink using the old recipe, then faded it using lacrimae draconis (I have no idea what lacrimae draconis is; I made it up on the spur of the moment, but it must have sounded good, because they believed me). The tube, I added, was an actual genuine Imperial library tube, in which I’d brought home the Principles of Mathematics. I recognized it for what it was when I saw it lying around in the workshop in Escuivel, because I’d seen plenty like it when my pals and I burned the library at Coriadis, after we’d taken the city from the Dejauzi.

And why, asked the chairman of the tribunal, would the prisoner Ogyga want you to forge this appalling document? Did she happen to mention anything about that? I shook my head and looked bewildered. No, your honor. But I didn’t dare ask questions, I was so terrified.

The tribunal drew its own conclusions. The only motive they could think of was that Ogyga, or her sister, or the two of them together had concocted this abominable thing with a view to blackmailing the established church, in the person of the Supreme Pontiff. Their plan was diabolically simple. I was forced to create the original scroll and a beautiful illuminated copy, worthy of being sent as a gift to His Holiness. The pontiff, realizing that the existence of such a document would destroy the church and true religion in the West, would demand the original; he would get it, at a price—a cardinal’s hat for the abbess, a ridiculous amount of money for Ogyga, something like that. It was, the tribunal concluded, the most appallingly blasphemous fraud they’d ever come across in their lives, and no punishment could be too severe.

I was there when Ogyga and the abbess were burned. The screams and the smell, particularly the latter, brought back memories. The only true bit in my testimony before the tribunal was about burning the library at Coriadis. I did that, no doubt about it. We didn’t do it frivolously, just for a lark; we weren’t savages. But the survivors of the Dejauzi garrison had holed up in the library, about a hundred and ten men. We’d been fighting for days, we were worn out and fed up, and so when one of us (I think it may have been me) suggested putting a torch to the place and letting nature take its course, nobody objected very much. The ensuing fire was hot enough to melt nearly all the brass tubes, but one or two survived, which is how I recognized the one Ogyga put on my desk. How it came to have left Coriadis before the destruction I don’t know and can’t be bothered to guess; but it had definitely been there, at one time. And so, for what it’s worth, had I.

There’s a good bit in one of Saloninus’s plays. There’s a watchman sitting in a tower, and he sees a beacon fire. The chain of beacons has been set up so that news of the fall of Ap’Escatoy will reach the king’s palace in minutes rather than months, and the watchman has this speech about how the fire leaps—figuratively speaking, of course—from the burning roofs of Ap’Escatoy and from mountaintop to mountaintop until it arrives right there in the palace, hundreds of miles away. Of course, what happens next is that the king comes home from the war and is murdered by his wife and her lover, who in turn perish when the king’s son comes after them with fire and sword; so the fires of Ap’Escatoy burn down the house of the man who destroyed it. Very poetic and apt.

But not as fanciful as you might think. I’m not a betting man, but I’ll give you any odds you like that it was a spark from Coriadis that lit the heap of oil-soaked faggots under Ogyga’s feet. And it served the bitch right.

The book I painted was declared to be evidence, and ended up on display on a lectern in the pontiff’s private chapel, which is slightly bigger than the state arsenal and has murals by Carnufex the Younger. I didn’t get paid for it, of course, but since they decided I’d acted under duress, they didn’t press charges, so I don’t mind all that much.

The original scroll was also declared evidence, but that was all right. It was put in a box, which was put inside another box, which was put in a shed full of boxes, with guards on the door. Jailed, arguably, for a crime it didn’t commit. Tough, is all I have to say about that. Happens to the best of us.

Except that twenty years later, after I lost the use of my right hand in a fire in my workshop, I ended up as curator of the Poor Sisters on Scona, the second biggest library in the West. It’s a cushy job, much better than I deserve. I spend my days preserving, repairing, and transcribing rare and beautiful manuscripts, many of which are the only copies in existence. Apparently they reckon I’m good at it. Since I’ve been in charge, our departmental budget has been increased by a third, and I have a staff of twelve dedicated craftsmen to make up for my clawed and desiccated fingers. The money’s all right, which is just as well, since the fire left me practically destitute. But I’ve paid my debts, and these days I have money to spend. I collect old books. It’s something to do.

The point being, in the course of my duties, I went to the episcopal repository in Auxentia City. Apparently there was a second copy of a book I was restoring in the vaults there. I only found out about the second copy because a man I know, a member of the faculty of law, told me that it had been used in evidence in a trial, and, having been declared evidence, it’d still be there, in the archives somewhere. Evidence, he told me with a grin, is Truth, and Truth never dies; instead, they lock it up and throw away the key.

So I traced the book I was after to the repository in Auxentia City. I was able to do that because of the Grand Consolidated Index, a truly wonderful thing, which lists every item of evidence from every court case in the diocese. The Index lives in the hall of records in Auxentia, which meant a boat trip to the mainland. While I was there, it occurred to me to look something else up in the Index; and there it was, with a full reference, only rather more legible than some I’d come across in the past.

There’s not a lot to do in Auxentia City if you don’t like public executions or bear-baiting, I had time to kill before catching the boat back to Scona, and the strong, silent men who find and fetch boxes at the repository had been ordered to bring me anything I asked for. So I told them to bring me a second box, and when it came, I asked them to prize off the lid.

It was still there, in its brass jail. I teased it out and unrolled it, using three-gulden bits to weigh down the corners. I’d brought my Mezentine glass with me, and I examined it carefully in the bright Auxentine sunlight glancing in through the open door. It wasn’t long before I found what I was looking for.

You may remember me driveling on earlier about the Varith, the illiterate scribes who make such very fine copies of books they can’t read. I’d been collecting Varith manuscripts for a while, ever since I started having money to burn, and I was starting to appreciate the quite exceptional level of skill some of the scribes possessed. They were capable, some of them, of copying a substantial book and only making one or two mistakes, those trademark not-words I told you about earlier. But they had other trademarks too, so subtle that you need to know what you’re looking for—certain very slight idiosyncrasies in writing certain letters; a tiny flick at the end, an almost invisible paleness indicating a brush held a certain way.

I know quite a bit about Varith manuscripts, but I’m not an expert. There are true experts, but they’re all in Sashan and Echmen. They’d be able to tell me, definitively and for certain, if Ogyga’s scroll was genuine or a Varith copy. But if it’s a copy, it’s probably only about eighty years old. The Varith were the best there’s ever been at faking paper to make it look ancient.

I was about to roll it up and put it away when I carelessly knocked over the lamp I’d brought with me. I stamped out the burning oil before any harm was done.

On the ship home, it occurred to me that I might have acted hastily. But no, I thought, the hell with that. I’ve done my time. I’m through with being a beacon.

“Burning Books for Pleasure and Profit” copyright © 2022 by K.J. Parker Artwork copyright © 2022 by Juan Bernabeu

[itoshi-s]

i just now when rin has a bad match he would take out all of his anger on you later that night and then reward you with gentle & soft aftercare (making you a bath, massaging etc) because he was so rough on you for hours and over stimulated your body :(((

ohhhh :( he definitely does!! you're his remedy to everything, awful matches included, and there's no better way to calm his nerves than to have you submit to him :( you know he needs that, feel it in the way he's always a smidge more desperate and how his grip on you is tighter than usual. the adrenaline of the game wears off only hours later, when his legs grow shaky from exhaustion and it's hard to keep himself up straight anymore. he plops down on top of you, a bit more playful now that the tension has subceeded, and chuckles when you try to slap him away with a trembling hand. and listen, if HE is worn out, then you can alr think of how beat u are 😭 muscles strained, neck bruised, lungs burning - he doesn't have to look at you to tell that you're at your absolute limit. he knows that you probably only wish to turn to the side and fall asleep now, but it'll be just so much better if he takes care of you properly :( it's almost some sort of a guilty pleasure of his, makes his heart flutter in his chest and tummy feel warm at the sight of you so soft and all open for him to take care of. he wouldn't admit it out loud, but you've noticed - it's obvious, mostly from the lovesick looks he gives you <3

he runs you a bubble bath, dunking all of your favorite accessories in - oils, bombs, fuck he never knew there was so much of it until you moved in together (now he has all of your favorite products memorized lol he's a simp !!!!). makes sure the water isn't too hot to make you dizzy, but just enough to relief the ache in your muscles that he put through so much </3 brings u a glass of ice water or some nice wine,, depending on your mood, as well as your favorite book. sometimes you tug him back by his wrist when he goes to walk out and so he just plops down on the chair by the tub and chats with you as u relax :( it's so simple but does wonders, makes you all fuzzy and feeling looked after - and it's all he ever wants for you.

he offers you a massage when you get out of the bath, lathers his hands with oil and works out all the knots in your back and shoulders. he's weirdly skilled with his hands !! sure, ofc they have to know the basic techniques to ease out their muscles, but he gets really into it </3 he's a weirdo but you profit from it hehe!! presses a few gentle kisses along your nape and pats your bum when he's done and you can only hum softly, nearly asleep by this point :(

he's so lovely, looks after you every minute he can - and he does it both through the tiniest actions on the daily and then again these full on routines that he's just so happy to go thru with <3 after all, you deserve nothing less than the best treatment !