Podcasts about Inky

Ownership Mindset: Taking Full Responsibility for Your Growth challenges listeners to shift from blame to ownership—because real growth begins when excuses end. In this episode, we unpack what it means to take full responsibility for your progress, leadership, and life direction.Through the incredible story of Inky Johnson—who was eight games away from the NFL before a life-altering injury paralyzed his right arm—we explore how radical ownership isn't about pretending life is fair, but about choosing how to respond when it isn't. Inky's mindset, summed up in his words “Redirection, pain, setbacks, shortcomings, highs, lows—they are all part of the process of success. Embrace it, respect it, and trust it” becomes the foundation for a deeper call to lead ourselves well.The episode concludes with practical ways to implement the ownership mindset in everyday life, reminding us that the power to change lies in the willingness to own what's ours. This episode will speak to anyone feeling stuck, frustrated, or ready to step into the next level of their leadership journey. Thank you for joining us on this insightful journey! Explore more about our mission to empower through automotive expertise at cbac.com. Keep steering your life with purpose and stay driven!

V květnu na houby? Proč ne! Hlíva ústřičná je zdravá, chutná a prý i omlazuje. A když ji uděláte na divoko, klidně nahradí i sváteční svíčkovou s knedlíkem. Více prozradí Alenka s Jiřinkou.

www.matejmravec.sk

V dnešní radioporadně se zaměříme na dva velmi oblíbené, ne-li nejoblíbenější nápoje naší planety. Což je jistě kávu a čaj. A prozkoumáme je z pohledu chemie a vědy. Co stojí za jejich přitažlivostí, za jejich chutí a vůní? Jaké mají tyto nápoje účinky na lidské tělo?

Oslavy Dne Země, čarodějnická Filipojakubská noc, zdravé recepty, kouzla i tradice. Veselí, láska a tipy pro jarní očistu těla i duše. I to je další návštěva u Jiřinky s Alenkou.

Pro člověka i životní prostředí mají toxické látky v kosmetice různé funkce. Stabilizaci nebo zvýraznění vůně syntetickými složkami sice regulujeme, ale často až po uvedení na trh. Proč se takovým látkám chceme vyhnout a jak se v současné době vyznat v množství produktů, které zdůrazňují svůj přírodní původ, vysvětluje odbornice na toxické látky v životním prostředí.

In the latest edition of her sinking podcast  *Confessions of a Female Founder*, the Duchess of Sussex has opened up about the rebranding of her lifestyle venture, explaining why she abandoned the original name *American Riviera Orchard* in favour of *As Ever*. We also learn of Meghan's inky hair.Industry experts are noticiing the lack of star power on this series.Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app which seays UNINTERRUPTED LISTENING. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!  You also get 20+ other shows on the network ad-free!    Subscribe to Deep Crown's free newsletter at https://deepcrown.substack.com

Marinovaná vejce, jarní únava, velikonoční poezie – vše, co potřebujete vědět, než vás přepadne pondělní pomlázka. Poseďte si s námi na návštěvě u Jiřinky s Alenkou.

Ak chcete podporovať môj podcast, pridajte sa na herohero.co/odznova Môžete pozerať rozhovory bez omeškania, bez reklamy a aj bonusy z niektorých živých podujatí. POdporiť ma môžete aj na č.ú: SK45 8330 0000 0022 0165 1060 - do poznámky uveďte, že ide o dar DAKUJEM

Listen in as Real Science Radio host Fred Williams and co-host Doug McBurney review and update some of Bob Enyart's legendary list of not so old things! From Darwin's Finches to opals forming in months to man's genetic diversity in 200 generations, to carbon 14 everywhere it's not supposed to be (including in diamonds and dinosaur bones!), scientific observations simply defy the claim that the earth is billions of years old. Real science demands the dismissal of the alleged million and billion year ages asserted by the ungodly and the foolish.     * Finches Adapt in 17 Years, Not 2.3 Million: Charles Darwin's finches are claimed to have taken 2,300,000 years to diversify from an initial species blown onto the Galapagos Islands. Yet individuals from a single finch species on a U.S. Bird Reservation in the Pacific were introduced to a group of small islands 300 miles away and in at most 17 years, like Darwin's finches, they had diversified their beaks, related muscles, and behavior to fill various ecological niches. Hear about this also at rsr.org/spetner.  * Finches Speciate in Two Generations vs Two Million Years for Darwin's Birds?  Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands are said to have diversified into 14 species over a period of two million years. But in 2017 the journal Science reported a newcomer to the Island which within two generations spawned a reproductively isolated new species. In another instance as documented by Lee Spetner, a hundred birds of the same finch species introduced to an island cluster a 1,000 kilometers from Galapagos diversified into species with the typical variations in beak sizes, etc. "If this diversification occurred in less than seventeen years," Dr. Spetner asks, "why did Darwin's Galapagos finches [as claimed by evolutionists] have to take two million years?" * Opals Can Form in "A Few Months" And Don't Need 100,000 Years: A leading authority on opals, Allan W. Eckert, observed that, "scientific papers and textbooks have told that the process of opal formation requires tens of thousands of years, perhaps hundreds of thousands... Not true." A 2011 peer-reviewed paper in a geology journal from Australia, where almost all the world's opal is found, reported on the: "new timetable for opal formation involving weeks to a few months and not the hundreds of thousands of years envisaged by the conventional weathering model." (And apparently, per a 2019 report from Entomology Today, opals can even form around insects!) More knowledgeable scientists resist the uncritical, group-think insistence on false super-slow formation rates (as also for manganese nodules, gold veins, stone, petroleum, canyons and gullies, and even guts, all below). Regarding opals, Darwinian bias led geologists to long ignore possible quick action, as from microbes, as a possible explanation for these mineraloids. For both in nature and in the lab, opals form rapidly, not even in 10,000 years, but in weeks. See this also from creationists by a geologist, a paleobiochemist, and a nuclear chemist. * Blue Eyes Originated Not So Long Ago: Not a million years ago, nor a hundred thousand years ago, but based on a peer-reviewed paper in Human Genetics, a press release at Science Daily reports that, "research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today." * Adding the Entire Universe to our List of Not So Old Things? Based on March 2019 findings from Hubble, Nobel laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and his co-authors in the Astrophysical Journal estimate that the universe is about a billion years younger than previously thought! Then in September 2019 in the journal Science, the age dropped precipitously to as low as 11.4 billion years! Of course, these measurements also further squeeze the canonical story of the big bang chronology with its many already existing problems including the insufficient time to "evolve" distant mature galaxies, galaxy clusters, superclusters, enormous black holes, filaments, bubbles, walls, and other superstructures. So, even though the latest estimates are still absurdly too old (Google: big bang predictions, and click on the #1 ranked article, or just go on over there to rsr.org/bb), regardless, we thought we'd plop the whole universe down on our List of Not So Old Things!   * After the Soft Tissue Discoveries, NOW Dino DNA: When a North Carolina State University paleontologist took the Tyrannosaurus Rex photos to the right of original biological material, that led to the 2016 discovery of dinosaur DNA, So far researchers have also recovered dinosaur blood vessels, collagen, osteocytes, hemoglobin, red blood cells, and various proteins. As of May 2018, twenty-six scientific journals, including Nature, Science, PNAS, PLoS One, Bone, and Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, have confirmed the discovery of biomaterial fossils from many dinosaurs! Organisms including T. Rex, hadrosaur, titanosaur, triceratops, Lufengosaur, mosasaur, and Archaeopteryx, and many others dated, allegedly, even hundreds of millions of years old, have yielded their endogenous, still-soft biological material. See the web's most complete listing of 100+ journal papers (screenshot, left) announcing these discoveries at bflist.rsr.org and see it in layman's terms at rsr.org/soft. * Rapid Stalactites, Stalagmites, Etc.: A construction worker in 1954 left a lemonade bottle in one of Australia's famous Jenolan Caves. By 2011 it had been naturally transformed into a stalagmite (below, right). Increasing scientific knowledge is arguing for rapid cave formation (see below, Nat'l Park Service shrinks Carlsbad Caverns formation estimates from 260M years, to 10M, to 2M, to it "depends"). Likewise, examples are growing of rapid formations with typical chemical make-up (see bottle, left) of classic stalactites and stalagmites including: - in Nat'l Geo the Carlsbad Caverns stalagmite that rapidly covered a bat - the tunnel stalagmites at Tennessee's Raccoon Mountain - hundreds of stalactites beneath the Lincoln Memorial - those near Gladfelter Hall at Philadelphia's Temple University (send photos to Bob@rsr.org) - hundreds of stalactites at Australia's zinc mine at Mt. Isa.   - and those beneath Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance. * Most Human Mutations Arose in 200 Generations: From Adam until Real Science Radio, in only 200 generations! The journal Nature reports The Recent Origin of Most Human Protein-coding Variants. As summarized by geneticist co-author Joshua Akey, "Most of the mutations that we found arose in the last 200 generations or so" (the same number previously published by biblical creationists). Another 2012 paper, in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Eugenie Scott's own field) on High mitochondrial mutation rates, shows that one mitochondrial DNA mutation occurs every other generation, which, as creationists point out, indicates that mtEve would have lived about 200 generations ago. That's not so old! * National Geographic's Not-So-Old Hard-Rock Canyon at Mount St. Helens: As our List of Not So Old Things (this web page) reveals, by a kneejerk reaction evolutionary scientists assign ages of tens or hundreds of thousands of years (or at least just long enough to contradict Moses' chronology in Genesis.) However, with closer study, routinely, more and more old ages get revised downward to fit the world's growing scientific knowledge. So the trend is not that more information lengthens ages, but rather, as data replaces guesswork, ages tend to shrink until they are consistent with the young-earth biblical timeframe. Consistent with this observation, the May 2000 issue of National Geographic quotes the U.S. Forest Service's scientist at Mount St. Helens, Peter Frenzen, describing the canyon on the north side of the volcano. "You'd expect a hard-rock canyon to be thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years old. But this was cut in less than a decade." And as for the volcano itself, while again, the kneejerk reaction of old-earthers would be to claim that most geologic features are hundreds of thousands or millions of years old, the atheistic National Geographic magazine acknowledges from the evidence that Mount St. Helens, the volcanic mount, is only about 4,000 years old! See below and more at rsr.org/mount-st-helens. * Mount St. Helens Dome Ten Years Old not 1.7 Million: Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, Mass., using potassium-argon and other radiometric techniques claims the rock sample they dated, from the volcano's dome, solidified somewhere between 340,000 and 2.8 million years ago. However photographic evidence and historical reports document the dome's formation during the 1980s, just ten years prior to the samples being collected. With the age of this rock known, radiometric dating therefore gets the age 99.99999% wrong. * Devils Hole Pupfish Isolated Not for 13,000 Years But for 100: Secular scientists default to knee-jerk, older-than-Bible-age dates. However, a tiny Mojave desert fish is having none of it. Rather than having been genetically isolated from other fish for 13,000 years (which would make this small school of fish older than the Earth itself), according to a paper in the journal Nature, actual measurements of mutation rates indicate that the genetic diversity of these Pupfish could have been generated in about 100 years, give or take a few. * Polystrates like Spines and Rare Schools of Fossilized Jellyfish: Previously, seven sedimentary layers in Wisconsin had been described as taking a million years to form. And because jellyfish have no skeleton, as Charles Darwin pointed out, it is rare to find them among fossils. But now, reported in the journal Geology, a school of jellyfish fossils have been found throughout those same seven layers. So, polystrate fossils that condense the time of strata deposition from eons to hours or months, include: - Jellyfish in central Wisconsin were not deposited and fossilized over a million years but during a single event quick enough to trap a whole school. (This fossil school, therefore, taken as a unit forms a polystrate fossil.) Examples are everywhere that falsify the claims of strata deposition over millions of years. - Countless trilobites buried in astounding three dimensionality around the world are meticulously recovered from limestone, much of which is claimed to have been deposited very slowly. Contrariwise, because these specimens were buried rapidly in quickly laid down sediments, they show no evidence of greater erosion on their upper parts as compared to their lower parts. - The delicacy of radiating spine polystrates, like tadpole and jellyfish fossils, especially clearly demonstrate the rapidity of such strata deposition. - A second school of jellyfish, even though they rarely fossilized, exists in another locale with jellyfish fossils in multiple layers, in Australia's Brockman Iron Formation, constraining there too the rate of strata deposition. By the way, jellyfish are an example of evolution's big squeeze. Like galaxies evolving too quickly, 

Listen in as Real Science Radio host Fred Williams and co-host Doug McBurney review and update some of Bob Enyart's legendary list of not so old things! From Darwin's Finches to opals forming in months to man's genetic diversity in 200 generations, to carbon 14 everywhere it's not supposed to be (including in diamonds and dinosaur bones!), scientific observations simply defy the claim that the earth is billions of years old. Real science demands the dismissal of the alleged million and billion year ages asserted by the ungodly and the foolish.   * Finches Adapt in 17 Years, Not 2.3 Million: Charles Darwin's finches are claimed to have taken 2,300,000 years to diversify from an initial species blown onto the Galapagos Islands. Yet individuals from a single finch species on a U.S. Bird Reservation in the Pacific were introduced to a group of small islands 300 miles away and in at most 17 years, like Darwin's finches, they had diversified their beaks, related muscles, and behavior to fill various ecological niches. Hear about this also at rsr.org/spetner.  * Finches Speciate in Two Generations vs Two Million Years for Darwin's Birds?  Darwin's finches on the Galapagos Islands are said to have diversified into 14 species over a period of two million years. But in 2017 the journal Science reported a newcomer to the Island which within two generations spawned a reproductively isolated new species. In another instance as documented by Lee Spetner, a hundred birds of the same finch species introduced to an island cluster a 1,000 kilometers from Galapagos diversified into species with the typical variations in beak sizes, etc. "If this diversification occurred in less than seventeen years," Dr. Spetner asks, "why did Darwin's Galapagos finches [as claimed by evolutionists] have to take two million years?" * Opals Can Form in "A Few Months" And Don't Need 100,000 Years: A leading authority on opals, Allan W. Eckert, observed that, "scientific papers and textbooks have told that the process of opal formation requires tens of thousands of years, perhaps hundreds of thousands... Not true." A 2011 peer-reviewed paper in a geology journal from Australia, where almost all the world's opal is found, reported on the: "new timetable for opal formation involving weeks to a few months and not the hundreds of thousands of years envisaged by the conventional weathering model." (And apparently, per a 2019 report from Entomology Today, opals can even form around insects!) More knowledgeable scientists resist the uncritical, group-think insistence on false super-slow formation rates (as also for manganese nodules, gold veins, stone, petroleum, canyons and gullies, and even guts, all below). Regarding opals, Darwinian bias led geologists to long ignore possible quick action, as from microbes, as a possible explanation for these mineraloids. For both in nature and in the lab, opals form rapidly, not even in 10,000 years, but in weeks. See this also from creationists by a geologist, a paleobiochemist, and a nuclear chemist. * Blue Eyes Originated Not So Long Ago: Not a million years ago, nor a hundred thousand years ago, but based on a peer-reviewed paper in Human Genetics, a press release at Science Daily reports that, "research shows that people with blue eyes have a single, common ancestor. A team at the University of Copenhagen have tracked down a genetic mutation which took place 6-10,000 years ago and is the cause of the eye color of all blue-eyed humans alive on the planet today." * Adding the Entire Universe to our List of Not So Old Things? Based on March 2019 findings from Hubble, Nobel laureate Adam Riess of the Space Telescope Science Institute and his co-authors in the Astrophysical Journal estimate that the universe is about a billion years younger than previously thought! Then in September 2019 in the journal Science, the age dropped precipitously to as low as 11.4 billion years! Of course, these measurements also further squeeze the canonical story of the big bang chronology with its many already existing problems including the insufficient time to "evolve" distant mature galaxies, galaxy clusters, superclusters, enormous black holes, filaments, bubbles, walls, and other superstructures. So, even though the latest estimates are still absurdly too old (Google: big bang predictions, and click on the #1 ranked article, or just go on over there to rsr.org/bb), regardless, we thought we'd plop the whole universe down on our List of Not So Old Things!   * After the Soft Tissue Discoveries, NOW Dino DNA: When a North Carolina State University paleontologist took the Tyrannosaurus Rex photos to the right of original biological material, that led to the 2016 discovery of dinosaur DNA, So far researchers have also recovered dinosaur blood vessels, collagen, osteocytes, hemoglobin, red blood cells, and various proteins. As of May 2018, twenty-six scientific journals, including Nature, Science, PNAS, PLoS One, Bone, and Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, have confirmed the discovery of biomaterial fossils from many dinosaurs! Organisms including T. Rex, hadrosaur, titanosaur, triceratops, Lufengosaur, mosasaur, and Archaeopteryx, and many others dated, allegedly, even hundreds of millions of years old, have yielded their endogenous, still-soft biological material. See the web's most complete listing of 100+ journal papers (screenshot, left) announcing these discoveries at bflist.rsr.org and see it in layman's terms at rsr.org/soft. * Rapid Stalactites, Stalagmites, Etc.: A construction worker in 1954 left a lemonade bottle in one of Australia's famous Jenolan Caves. By 2011 it had been naturally transformed into a stalagmite (below, right). Increasing scientific knowledge is arguing for rapid cave formation (see below, Nat'l Park Service shrinks Carlsbad Caverns formation estimates from 260M years, to 10M, to 2M, to it "depends"). Likewise, examples are growing of rapid formations with typical chemical make-up (see bottle, left) of classic stalactites and stalagmites including: - in Nat'l Geo the Carlsbad Caverns stalagmite that rapidly covered a bat - the tunnel stalagmites at Tennessee's Raccoon Mountain - hundreds of stalactites beneath the Lincoln Memorial - those near Gladfelter Hall at Philadelphia's Temple University (send photos to Bob@rsr.org) - hundreds of stalactites at Australia's zinc mine at Mt. Isa.   - and those beneath Melbourne's Shrine of Remembrance. * Most Human Mutations Arose in 200 Generations: From Adam until Real Science Radio, in only 200 generations! The journal Nature reports The Recent Origin of Most Human Protein-coding Variants. As summarized by geneticist co-author Joshua Akey, "Most of the mutations that we found arose in the last 200 generations or so" (the same number previously published by biblical creationists). Another 2012 paper, in the American Journal of Physical Anthropology (Eugenie Scott's own field) on High mitochondrial mutation rates, shows that one mitochondrial DNA mutation occurs every other generation, which, as creationists point out, indicates that mtEve would have lived about 200 generations ago. That's not so old! * National Geographic's Not-So-Old Hard-Rock Canyon at Mount St. Helens: As our List of Not So Old Things (this web page) reveals, by a kneejerk reaction evolutionary scientists assign ages of tens or hundreds of thousands of years (or at least just long enough to contradict Moses' chronology in Genesis.) However, with closer study, routinely, more and more old ages get revised downward to fit the world's growing scientific knowledge. So the trend is not that more information lengthens ages, but rather, as data replaces guesswork, ages tend to shrink until they are consistent with the young-earth biblical timeframe. Consistent with this observation, the May 2000 issue of National Geographic quotes the U.S. Forest Service's scientist at Mount St. Helens, Peter Frenzen, describing the canyon on the north side of the volcano. "You'd expect a hard-rock canyon to be thousands, even hundreds of thousands of years old. But this was cut in less than a decade." And as for the volcano itself, while again, the kneejerk reaction of old-earthers would be to claim that most geologic features are hundreds of thousands or millions of years old, the atheistic National Geographic magazine acknowledges from the evidence that Mount St. Helens, the volcanic mount, is only about 4,000 years old! See below and more at rsr.org/mount-st-helens. * Mount St. Helens Dome Ten Years Old not 1.7 Million: Geochron Laboratories of Cambridge, Mass., using potassium-argon and other radiometric techniques claims the rock sample they dated, from the volcano's dome, solidified somewhere between 340,000 and 2.8 million years ago. However photographic evidence and historical reports document the dome's formation during the 1980s, just ten years prior to the samples being collected. With the age of this rock known, radiometric dating therefore gets the age 99.99999% wrong. * Devils Hole Pupfish Isolated Not for 13,000 Years But for 100: Secular scientists default to knee-jerk, older-than-Bible-age dates. However, a tiny Mojave desert fish is having none of it. Rather than having been genetically isolated from other fish for 13,000 years (which would make this small school of fish older than the Earth itself), according to a paper in the journal Nature, actual measurements of mutation rates indicate that the genetic diversity of these Pupfish could have been generated in about 100 years, give or take a few. * Polystrates like Spines and Rare Schools of Fossilized Jellyfish: Previously, seven sedimentary layers in Wisconsin had been described as taking a million years to form. And because jellyfish have no skeleton, as Charles Darwin pointed out, it is rare to find them among fossils. But now, reported in the journal Geology, a school of jellyfish fossils have been found throughout those same seven layers. So, polystrate fossils that condense the time of strata deposition from eons to hours or months, include: - Jellyfish in central Wisconsin were not deposited and fossilized over a million years but during a single event quick enough to trap a whole school. (This fossil school, therefore, taken as a unit forms a polystrate fossil.) Examples are everywhere that falsify the claims of strata deposition over millions of years. - Countless trilobites buried in astounding three dimensionality around the world are meticulously recovered from limestone, much of which is claimed to have been deposited very slowly. Contrariwise, because these specimens were buried rapidly in quickly laid down sediments, they show no evidence of greater erosion on their upper parts as compared to their lower parts. - The delicacy of radiating spine polystrates, like tadpole and jellyfish fossils, especially clearly demonstrate the rapidity of such strata deposition. - A second school of jellyfish, even though they rarely fossilized, exists in another locale with jellyfish fossils in multiple layers, in Australia's Brockman Iron Formation, constraining there too the rate of strata deposition. By the way, jellyfish are an example of evolution's big squeeze. Like galaxies e

India Rakusen is an award-winning journalist who crafts immersive stories that explore the human experience in our rapidly changing world, challenging what we think and why we think it.From witches and tarot card reading, ghosts to fertilisation and atoms, this fascinating episode of We Can Be Weirdos takes a look at the supernatural, but with its science hat on. Some of India's weirdness really is bat shit, but that's what we love. You can follow India on Instagram

 A countess offers her body to the highest bidder.By LouisaAdler. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. Chapter 1.The Marquess of Ravenswood hated dramatics.He also loathed crowds, prying eyes, and London. Yet, there he sat, in the very back row of what was surely the most infamous, crowded event in the city's history. Only one thing could pry him to this cesspool.The Hellfire Club was having an auction.Even Ravenswood couldn't resist that temptation. He shifted in the rickety wooden chair, his large frame unused to such cramped spaces. A growl of impatience left him. “For a gathering that's supposed to be secret, there are crush of fools here.”Next to him, Lord Seth Cardew rolled his eyes. “Only you would call two hundred attendees a crush, Will. It's been almost a year since the last auction, you know. Our membership craves this sort of diversion, even those whose pockets won't let them bid.”Will grumbled. Truth be told, he wouldn't be attending this blasted event, if it weren't for the letter. Even in the wilds of Yorkshire, he kept up with London's underbelly. Gossip had reached him, quietly and with the archest of tones, that suggested he might find tonight's auction particularly interesting. He didn't dare hope that what he looked for would be on display, however. In the five years since Violet had left him, no woman had tempted him for long. To think one of the women here, willingly selling herself to the highest bidder, would fill that void was ludicrous. He would be a damned, romantic fool to assume such a thing.Just in case, though…Just in case, here he was. Dressed like a Christmas goose, in his top hat and tails, and antsy. He'd taken the train down just that morning. “Get on with it,” he growled.As if bidden by his thoughts, the electric lights dimmed. The audience members, or buyers he supposed, were left in shadows, while the slightly raised stage remained illuminated by a host of white, glowing tapers. A woman stepped out of the gloom and onto the stage. Hers was a serious beauty, made more so by the candlelight. Inky black hair swept back in a chignon, with features as sharp as a hawk, she reminded Will of a governess.If governesses wore men's clothing, of course. The mistress of ceremonies was kitted out better than Will. On her tall, slim frame she'd donned black trousers, a perfectly tailored jacket, and gleaming, emerald silk waistcoat. The only nod to her femininity was the bright red stain on her lips.Will roused a little, intrigued against his will. She wasn't for him—too sharp, when he'd been spoiled by curves—but he appreciated beauty in all forms.“Welcome, friends, to The Hellfire Club's Mistress Auction,” she said in a deep, throaty voice. The room quieted even further. “I am Madame Valerie, purveyor of fine mistresses and the ringleader of this particular circus. We'll start, as always, with the gold contracts.”“Bring on the whores!”She narrowed her eyes at the audience, skewering the interrupter. “These are not whores, sir. The women who take part in this auction are of the highest breeding and class, women who have willingly signed their contracts and are bestowing their talents onto select, respected persons. We vet not only our mistresses, but their protectors.” Her tone suggested the man in question could kiss his luck tonight goodbye. Madame Valerie straightened and continued her introduction. “As I was saying, we'll start with the gold contracts. For those who are new to our ranks, I will explain.”“The Hellfire Club color codes our contract levels, each corresponding to a prescribed set of limitations. Gold contracts, the rarest, are entered into very carefully. There are no limits on what you can do, after purchasing a gold contract, aside from inflicting permanent bodily harm. For whatever amount of time she signs on for, the mistress will be under the buyer's complete control, both sexually and personally.”“She is, for all intents and purposes, an indentured sexual servant. Though, one who is paid quite handsomely for her time. We start the gold contract bidding first, so that your pockets are filled to her liking. Shall we begin?”Enthusiastic applause met her questions. With a flick of her wrist, Madame Valerie cued someone offstage and three women filed up the stairs, then into the light. Each was shrouded, from head to toe, in a velvet cloak. Red, green, and white, they looked like Christmas decorations, The Hellfire Club's sadistic nod to holiday merriment. They stopped behind Madame and bowed their covered heads in unison.Madame Valerie nodded her head. She smiled, cold and fast. “Very good, girls. Now, Twenty-Two do come forward. We begin with your contract.”The green-cloaked woman moved forward. Even covered by velvet, her generous body was evident, hips moving in sensuous rhythm with each step. Will stirred, aching for a closer look. That walk. It struck a chord in him, unfurled some long-tamped desire to possess.His lips twisted in the gloom. What foolishness. Underneath that cloak, she would be like every other woman he'd had. Beautiful, surely, but uninspiring.As if reading his mind, Madame Valerie reached out one slim hand and untied the other woman's robe. It fell to the floor in a puddle of emerald.The audience gasped. Several people around Will flipped through their programs, searching for her information page.Will started. She was completely nude, save an extravagant green half mask. Tumbling waves of long, dark red hair rioted around her, framing her body with flame. God, what a body. Twenty-Two was all curves. Generous breasts, more than a handful each, sat high above lush hips and an impossibly narrow waist. Will grew hard with just one glance, his cock insisting that he open his wallet, give her whatever she wanted. Anything to take her.Was her skin really so fair, or was she scattered with light freckles up close, like gold leaf over a canvas? Suddenly, it seemed the most important thing that he find out.He'd so loved Violet's freckles.The hand on his shoulder shocked Will out of his daze. He was half out of his chair, Seth restraining him with a smile. “Patience, Will,” his friend whispered, with a laugh.Right. The Hellfire Club would have its pomp and circumstance. No matter that Will was the richest man here by a mile, heir to both a dukedom and an American shipping fortune. This girl was already his, no question. Whatever amount of time she was contracted for, Will wanted her. Perhaps she, so like his first love in both coloring and form, would be the one to finally flush that need from his system.He would pay millions for such peace.2 Months Ago..The Countess of Mulvane shivered.Despite the fires raging in the ballroom, Georgiana was chilled through. Standing naked in a room full of your peers trembled even the most stalwart body. Given her life lately, she wasn't feeling particularly hardy. What foolishness, to think this would be the easy part.After agonizing over this decision, the Countess was ready to get on with it. There would be no more worry, simply pure sensation. Meet the man, fuck him madly for six months, then spend the rest of her life free. What a lovely word that was. Free.Funny, really, that giving in to a stranger's every sexual whim was her ticket to true freedom. Not only would her sisters be safe from scandal, but little Camille would be set up for life. All for something she enjoyed immensely. Stephen, damn his treacherous soul, had been a terrible husband, but an adventurous lover.And yet… Back to Today's Nude Mistress Auction.And yet nothing had quite prepared her for this feeling. Lascivious eyes raked over her body. Hundreds of masked and shadowed figures loomed in the darkness ahead of her, making appreciative murmurs of her form. If her mask should slip, all would be lost. The utmost secrecy of the contract was part of what lured her to the Hellfire Club. No one but her lover need know that the Countess of Mulvane had sunk so low. All of Stephen's failures were overturned, in exchange for half a year of Georgiana's service.It wasn't even a choice. She willed the mask to stay put.“Please turn around, Twenty-Two,” Madame Valerie ordered.Georgiana slowly pivoted to the back, conscious of every inch of her body. The audience's gazed tickled over the flare of her hips, down the swell of her bottom. Only two men had seen her so bare. To think that number was now multiplied a hundredfold, in less than a minute.Her eyes burned into the masked faces of the two women standing robed, at the back of the stage. The snowy fall of white silk and the bright crimson velvet shimmered in the light. What circumstances had brought them here? Were they desperate to right a wrong, like Georgiana, or merely in search of a few hedonistic thrills? Would that she could see their faces, find solace in their shared experiences. Madame Valerie had kept them in separate rooms, until right before the auction began. Time for one last reflection, the intimidating woman had suggested.“Our dear Twenty-Two has a generous figure, to be sure.” A cold, slim hand traced the line of Georgiana's spine. Goosebumps raised along her skin. When she came to her bottom, Madame Valerie squeezed the right cheek in apparent appreciation. “What a magnificent rump you have, lovely one. A man like's something to hold on to.”The audience whooped. A room full of aristocrats turned to rowdy schoolboys, with a little nudity and sexual titillation. Madame Valerie pushed at Georgiana's side, indicating she should turn once more. The woman's throaty voice continued its examination. “Twenty-Two's true assets, though, are these breasts.” At that, the mistress of ceremonies came around to the back of Georgiana, arms threading through hers like a lover. The woman's breath, hot and minty, caressed her neck. Madame Valerie cupped both of the countess's generous breasts in her hands. “Rare to have breasts so large still be so perky. What do you think, lads? Would we call them melons or grapefruits?”“Cantaloupes!”“Honeydews!”Madame Valerie laughed. “She will certainly do, honey.”A flush spread across Georgiana. Would the blasted auction never start? She raised her head a fraction, responding to the ribald investigation with hauteur. Her governesses had probably never intended those comportment lessons to land a peer's daughter here. Georgiana knew the ropes, though. The more they lusted after her, the higher the price. Whatever wicked little tricks Madame Valerie planned, they would drive the final payment higher. Her family was worth a moment's—a lifetime's—humiliation. Just as she finished that thought, Madame took both of her nipples in hand and pinched. Hard.Georgiana shrieked, taken by surprise more than pain. Sensation flooded her. Heat pooled, low and banked, in her pelvis.“They're sensitive, as well. Think what fun might be had with these darlings. I bet our prim little lady would love a set of clamps for Christmas.”The audience cheered in support. Georgiana shivered, desire ramping up past her defenses. How did Madame Valerie know? Stephen had a pair of clamps made especially for her, gold chain with emeralds winking at each tip. They'd been sold to a discrete buyer, along with everything else of value in Mulvane House. Just like Georgiana herself would soon be sold.Resolve wrapped around her heart. No.This was a temporary arrangement. She was selling her body willingly, happily even, but it was hardly the whole of her. Whomever paid for Georgiana's contract would receive a fool's bargain. He could have her body any way he wanted, but her soul wasn't up for grabs. She'd given that away only once and lived to regret it bitterly.Madame Valerie raked her hands down Georgiana's body, narrating for the audience, as she went. No mole, no patch of skin was left unviewed. The countess half expected the little majordomo to open her mouth and count each tooth aloud. For the inspection's finale, Georgiana was turned around once again, back facing the audience, and ordered to bend over. She clasped her ankles and closed her eyes. Cool air wafted over her nether regions.Oh, for heaven's sake, Georgiana. Don't be so missish.Nether regions, indeed. Her vagina—her cunny, Stephen had called it—was on full display for hundreds of people. Surely she could dismiss the euphemisms now.Madame Valerie spoke again. “Note the naturally red hair, gentleman. This one is a true ginger beauty.” An elegant finger traced the opening of Georgiana's slit, which was embarrassingly damp. “See how she glistens? Twenty-Two loves to submit to my whims. A natural pleasure object, as we proved during her training. You should see how she responds to the strap.”Shame, that useless emotion, flooded through Georgiana. How strange, to have her sexual deviancy discussed in such a cold, logical manner. She would be banished from Mayfair, if it got out that Countess Mulvane enjoyed being defiled in such a way. Yet, it was true. The last few weeks of training for the Hellfire Club had opened her mind to a world of sexual possibilities. Stephen had been dominant, yes, but he was the Pope compared to Mistress Valerie. Worse yet, Georgiana had enjoyed every moment. The darker the act, the more intense her pleasure.As if reading her mind, Madame Valerie began a rhythmic exploration of Georgiana's folds. The majordomo stroked up her pussy lips, around her clitoris. Up and down. Back and forth and—“Oh, God.” Georgiana couldn't control the invocation. Her body was alive with sensation. Nipples pebbled, muscles twitched, with the glorious motions.“Such a vocal little thing. Enjoying yourself, Twenty-Two?”“Yes. Oh, yes.”Slap. Madame hit her bottom, open-handed. “Yes, what?”The weeks of training jogged Georgiana's memory. Her voice was thready with desire. “Yes, Madame Valerie.”“That's better.” The mistress plunged a finger into Georgiana's opening, drawing circles with her thumb over the nearby clitoris. A second finger soon followed.Georgiana groaned in response. Heavens, that was good. So terribly, horribly good.“Do you want to come, little one?”“Y-yes, Madame Valerie.”“Say it. Tell these people what your naughty little body wants. Tell them exactly how bad you can be, despite those angelic curves.”“I want to come, Madame Valerie. Please keep doing that with your hands.”Slap. “Doing what exactly?”“Playing with my c-cunt, Madame.” The words burned through Georgiana. Humiliation warred with desire. Desire won, desperate and hot. Just a little more. “I like it when you fill my cunt with your fingers and stroke my clitoris. Would you go a little faster, please, Madame?”Slap. Slap. Thwack. A flurry of strokes rained down on Georgiana's upturned bottom. Pain twined with pleasure, white hot and sharp. Madame obliged the pleas, though, her hands working furiously at Georgiana's clit. Spanks alternated with strokes. Sensation overcame the countess, her cries dancing in the air.Oh, it hurt. God, it felt so, so—Georgiana climaxed, with a shout. The release washed over her in a storm of pleasure, twitching her muscles and firing each nerve, like a cannon. When she finally regained her senses, Georgiana quietly said the final words of her training. “Thank you, Madame Valerie.”Another slap to her bottom. “You're quite welcome, Twenty-Two. Stand up and turn around.”Doing as bidden, Georgiana faced the audience once again. A drop of sweat whisked down her spine. The front row of spectators watched her with obvious desire on every face, mouths agape. Her humiliation was worth it in the end, as Madame promised.The Countess of Mulvane had orgasmed in front of a room full of people. Next, she would secure her future. On cue, Madame Valerie gave the last signal. Georgiana fell to her knees, head bowed. And so the auction began.“That was quite a show, wasn't it? Imagine what a woman like this could become with a bit more training. We'll start the bidding at one thousand pounds, my lords.”A voice, deep and hideously familiar, rent the silence. “Five hundred thousand pounds.”“Sold to—” Madame Valerie paused, as if shocked into silence. “My, my. The Marquess of Ravenswood.”The words fell on Georgiana like an anvil. Oh no.No, no, no.Georgiana's head snapped up, willing her ears to be malfunctioning. There at the bottom of the stage, stood a man. He was a little broader than she remembered—the country exile did wonderful things for his already muscled physique—but the sandy blond hair and penetrating brown eyes were achingly familiar. The Marquess of Ravenswood had just purchased her contract. She was to be Will Thorne's sexual plaything.All was lost.By LouisaAdler for Literotica

 A countess offers her body to the highest bidder.By LouisaAdler. Listen to the Podcast at Steamy Stories. Chapter 1.The Marquess of Ravenswood hated dramatics.He also loathed crowds, prying eyes, and London. Yet, there he sat, in the very back row of what was surely the most infamous, crowded event in the city's history. Only one thing could pry him to this cesspool.The Hellfire Club was having an auction.Even Ravenswood couldn't resist that temptation. He shifted in the rickety wooden chair, his large frame unused to such cramped spaces. A growl of impatience left him. “For a gathering that's supposed to be secret, there are crush of fools here.”Next to him, Lord Seth Cardew rolled his eyes. “Only you would call two hundred attendees a crush, Will. It's been almost a year since the last auction, you know. Our membership craves this sort of diversion, even those whose pockets won't let them bid.”Will grumbled. Truth be told, he wouldn't be attending this blasted event, if it weren't for the letter. Even in the wilds of Yorkshire, he kept up with London's underbelly. Gossip had reached him, quietly and with the archest of tones, that suggested he might find tonight's auction particularly interesting. He didn't dare hope that what he looked for would be on display, however. In the five years since Violet had left him, no woman had tempted him for long. To think one of the women here, willingly selling herself to the highest bidder, would fill that void was ludicrous. He would be a damned, romantic fool to assume such a thing.Just in case, though…Just in case, here he was. Dressed like a Christmas goose, in his top hat and tails, and antsy. He'd taken the train down just that morning. “Get on with it,” he growled.As if bidden by his thoughts, the electric lights dimmed. The audience members, or buyers he supposed, were left in shadows, while the slightly raised stage remained illuminated by a host of white, glowing tapers. A woman stepped out of the gloom and onto the stage. Hers was a serious beauty, made more so by the candlelight. Inky black hair swept back in a chignon, with features as sharp as a hawk, she reminded Will of a governess.If governesses wore men's clothing, of course. The mistress of ceremonies was kitted out better than Will. On her tall, slim frame she'd donned black trousers, a perfectly tailored jacket, and gleaming, emerald silk waistcoat. The only nod to her femininity was the bright red stain on her lips.Will roused a little, intrigued against his will. She wasn't for him—too sharp, when he'd been spoiled by curves—but he appreciated beauty in all forms.“Welcome, friends, to The Hellfire Club's Mistress Auction,” she said in a deep, throaty voice. The room quieted even further. “I am Madame Valerie, purveyor of fine mistresses and the ringleader of this particular circus. We'll start, as always, with the gold contracts.”“Bring on the whores!”She narrowed her eyes at the audience, skewering the interrupter. “These are not whores, sir. The women who take part in this auction are of the highest breeding and class, women who have willingly signed their contracts and are bestowing their talents onto select, respected persons. We vet not only our mistresses, but their protectors.” Her tone suggested the man in question could kiss his luck tonight goodbye. Madame Valerie straightened and continued her introduction. “As I was saying, we'll start with the gold contracts. For those who are new to our ranks, I will explain.”“The Hellfire Club color codes our contract levels, each corresponding to a prescribed set of limitations. Gold contracts, the rarest, are entered into very carefully. There are no limits on what you can do, after purchasing a gold contract, aside from inflicting permanent bodily harm. For whatever amount of time she signs on for, the mistress will be under the buyer's complete control, both sexually and personally.”“She is, for all intents and purposes, an indentured sexual servant. Though, one who is paid quite handsomely for her time. We start the gold contract bidding first, so that your pockets are filled to her liking. Shall we begin?”Enthusiastic applause met her questions. With a flick of her wrist, Madame Valerie cued someone offstage and three women filed up the stairs, then into the light. Each was shrouded, from head to toe, in a velvet cloak. Red, green, and white, they looked like Christmas decorations, The Hellfire Club's sadistic nod to holiday merriment. They stopped behind Madame and bowed their covered heads in unison.Madame Valerie nodded her head. She smiled, cold and fast. “Very good, girls. Now, Twenty-Two do come forward. We begin with your contract.”The green-cloaked woman moved forward. Even covered by velvet, her generous body was evident, hips moving in sensuous rhythm with each step. Will stirred, aching for a closer look. That walk. It struck a chord in him, unfurled some long-tamped desire to possess.His lips twisted in the gloom. What foolishness. Underneath that cloak, she would be like every other woman he'd had. Beautiful, surely, but uninspiring.As if reading his mind, Madame Valerie reached out one slim hand and untied the other woman's robe. It fell to the floor in a puddle of emerald.The audience gasped. Several people around Will flipped through their programs, searching for her information page.Will started. She was completely nude, save an extravagant green half mask. Tumbling waves of long, dark red hair rioted around her, framing her body with flame. God, what a body. Twenty-Two was all curves. Generous breasts, more than a handful each, sat high above lush hips and an impossibly narrow waist. Will grew hard with just one glance, his cock insisting that he open his wallet, give her whatever she wanted. Anything to take her.Was her skin really so fair, or was she scattered with light freckles up close, like gold leaf over a canvas? Suddenly, it seemed the most important thing that he find out.He'd so loved Violet's freckles.The hand on his shoulder shocked Will out of his daze. He was half out of his chair, Seth restraining him with a smile. “Patience, Will,” his friend whispered, with a laugh.Right. The Hellfire Club would have its pomp and circumstance. No matter that Will was the richest man here by a mile, heir to both a dukedom and an American shipping fortune. This girl was already his, no question. Whatever amount of time she was contracted for, Will wanted her. Perhaps she, so like his first love in both coloring and form, would be the one to finally flush that need from his system.He would pay millions for such peace.2 Months Ago..The Countess of Mulvane shivered.Despite the fires raging in the ballroom, Georgiana was chilled through. Standing naked in a room full of your peers trembled even the most stalwart body. Given her life lately, she wasn't feeling particularly hardy. What foolishness, to think this would be the easy part.After agonizing over this decision, the Countess was ready to get on with it. There would be no more worry, simply pure sensation. Meet the man, fuck him madly for six months, then spend the rest of her life free. What a lovely word that was. Free.Funny, really, that giving in to a stranger's every sexual whim was her ticket to true freedom. Not only would her sisters be safe from scandal, but little Camille would be set up for life. All for something she enjoyed immensely. Stephen, damn his treacherous soul, had been a terrible husband, but an adventurous lover.And yet… Back to Today's Nude Mistress Auction.And yet nothing had quite prepared her for this feeling. Lascivious eyes raked over her body. Hundreds of masked and shadowed figures loomed in the darkness ahead of her, making appreciative murmurs of her form. If her mask should slip, all would be lost. The utmost secrecy of the contract was part of what lured her to the Hellfire Club. No one but her lover need know that the Countess of Mulvane had sunk so low. All of Stephen's failures were overturned, in exchange for half a year of Georgiana's service.It wasn't even a choice. She willed the mask to stay put.“Please turn around, Twenty-Two,” Madame Valerie ordered.Georgiana slowly pivoted to the back, conscious of every inch of her body. The audience's gazed tickled over the flare of her hips, down the swell of her bottom. Only two men had seen her so bare. To think that number was now multiplied a hundredfold, in less than a minute.Her eyes burned into the masked faces of the two women standing robed, at the back of the stage. The snowy fall of white silk and the bright crimson velvet shimmered in the light. What circumstances had brought them here? Were they desperate to right a wrong, like Georgiana, or merely in search of a few hedonistic thrills? Would that she could see their faces, find solace in their shared experiences. Madame Valerie had kept them in separate rooms, until right before the auction began. Time for one last reflection, the intimidating woman had suggested.“Our dear Twenty-Two has a generous figure, to be sure.” A cold, slim hand traced the line of Georgiana's spine. Goosebumps raised along her skin. When she came to her bottom, Madame Valerie squeezed the right cheek in apparent appreciation. “What a magnificent rump you have, lovely one. A man like's something to hold on to.”The audience whooped. A room full of aristocrats turned to rowdy schoolboys, with a little nudity and sexual titillation. Madame Valerie pushed at Georgiana's side, indicating she should turn once more. The woman's throaty voice continued its examination. “Twenty-Two's true assets, though, are these breasts.” At that, the mistress of ceremonies came around to the back of Georgiana, arms threading through hers like a lover. The woman's breath, hot and minty, caressed her neck. Madame Valerie cupped both of the countess's generous breasts in her hands. “Rare to have breasts so large still be so perky. What do you think, lads? Would we call them melons or grapefruits?”“Cantaloupes!”“Honeydews!”Madame Valerie laughed. “She will certainly do, honey.”A flush spread across Georgiana. Would the blasted auction never start? She raised her head a fraction, responding to the ribald investigation with hauteur. Her governesses had probably never intended those comportment lessons to land a peer's daughter here. Georgiana knew the ropes, though. The more they lusted after her, the higher the price. Whatever wicked little tricks Madame Valerie planned, they would drive the final payment higher. Her family was worth a moment's—a lifetime's—humiliation. Just as she finished that thought, Madame took both of her nipples in hand and pinched. Hard.Georgiana shrieked, taken by surprise more than pain. Sensation flooded her. Heat pooled, low and banked, in her pelvis.“They're sensitive, as well. Think what fun might be had with these darlings. I bet our prim little lady would love a set of clamps for Christmas.”The audience cheered in support. Georgiana shivered, desire ramping up past her defenses. How did Madame Valerie know? Stephen had a pair of clamps made especially for her, gold chain with emeralds winking at each tip. They'd been sold to a discrete buyer, along with everything else of value in Mulvane House. Just like Georgiana herself would soon be sold.Resolve wrapped around her heart. No.This was a temporary arrangement. She was selling her body willingly, happily even, but it was hardly the whole of her. Whomever paid for Georgiana's contract would receive a fool's bargain. He could have her body any way he wanted, but her soul wasn't up for grabs. She'd given that away only once and lived to regret it bitterly.Madame Valerie raked her hands down Georgiana's body, narrating for the audience, as she went. No mole, no patch of skin was left unviewed. The countess half expected the little majordomo to open her mouth and count each tooth aloud. For the inspection's finale, Georgiana was turned around once again, back facing the audience, and ordered to bend over. She clasped her ankles and closed her eyes. Cool air wafted over her nether regions.Oh, for heaven's sake, Georgiana. Don't be so missish.Nether regions, indeed. Her vagina—her cunny, Stephen had called it—was on full display for hundreds of people. Surely she could dismiss the euphemisms now.Madame Valerie spoke again. “Note the naturally red hair, gentleman. This one is a true ginger beauty.” An elegant finger traced the opening of Georgiana's slit, which was embarrassingly damp. “See how she glistens? Twenty-Two loves to submit to my whims. A natural pleasure object, as we proved during her training. You should see how she responds to the strap.”Shame, that useless emotion, flooded through Georgiana. How strange, to have her sexual deviancy discussed in such a cold, logical manner. She would be banished from Mayfair, if it got out that Countess Mulvane enjoyed being defiled in such a way. Yet, it was true. The last few weeks of training for the Hellfire Club had opened her mind to a world of sexual possibilities. Stephen had been dominant, yes, but he was the Pope compared to Mistress Valerie. Worse yet, Georgiana had enjoyed every moment. The darker the act, the more intense her pleasure.As if reading her mind, Madame Valerie began a rhythmic exploration of Georgiana's folds. The majordomo stroked up her pussy lips, around her clitoris. Up and down. Back and forth and—“Oh, God.” Georgiana couldn't control the invocation. Her body was alive with sensation. Nipples pebbled, muscles twitched, with the glorious motions.“Such a vocal little thing. Enjoying yourself, Twenty-Two?”“Yes. Oh, yes.”Slap. Madame hit her bottom, open-handed. “Yes, what?”The weeks of training jogged Georgiana's memory. Her voice was thready with desire. “Yes, Madame Valerie.”“That's better.” The mistress plunged a finger into Georgiana's opening, drawing circles with her thumb over the nearby clitoris. A second finger soon followed.Georgiana groaned in response. Heavens, that was good. So terribly, horribly good.“Do you want to come, little one?”“Y-yes, Madame Valerie.”“Say it. Tell these people what your naughty little body wants. Tell them exactly how bad you can be, despite those angelic curves.”“I want to come, Madame Valerie. Please keep doing that with your hands.”Slap. “Doing what exactly?”“Playing with my c-cunt, Madame.” The words burned through Georgiana. Humiliation warred with desire. Desire won, desperate and hot. Just a little more. “I like it when you fill my cunt with your fingers and stroke my clitoris. Would you go a little faster, please, Madame?”Slap. Slap. Thwack. A flurry of strokes rained down on Georgiana's upturned bottom. Pain twined with pleasure, white hot and sharp. Madame obliged the pleas, though, her hands working furiously at Georgiana's clit. Spanks alternated with strokes. Sensation overcame the countess, her cries dancing in the air.Oh, it hurt. God, it felt so, so—Georgiana climaxed, with a shout. The release washed over her in a storm of pleasure, twitching her muscles and firing each nerve, like a cannon. When she finally regained her senses, Georgiana quietly said the final words of her training. “Thank you, Madame Valerie.”Another slap to her bottom. “You're quite welcome, Twenty-Two. Stand up and turn around.”Doing as bidden, Georgiana faced the audience once again. A drop of sweat whisked down her spine. The front row of spectators watched her with obvious desire on every face, mouths agape. Her humiliation was worth it in the end, as Madame promised.The Countess of Mulvane had orgasmed in front of a room full of people. Next, she would secure her future. On cue, Madame Valerie gave the last signal. Georgiana fell to her knees, head bowed. And so the auction began.“That was quite a show, wasn't it? Imagine what a woman like this could become with a bit more training. We'll start the bidding at one thousand pounds, my lords.”A voice, deep and hideously familiar, rent the silence. “Five hundred thousand pounds.”“Sold to—” Madame Valerie paused, as if shocked into silence. “My, my. The Marquess of Ravenswood.”The words fell on Georgiana like an anvil. Oh no.No, no, no.Georgiana's head snapped up, willing her ears to be malfunctioning. There at the bottom of the stage, stood a man. He was a little broader than she remembered—the country exile did wonderful things for his already muscled physique—but the sandy blond hair and penetrating brown eyes were achingly familiar. The Marquess of Ravenswood had just purchased her contract. She was to be Will Thorne's sexual plaything.All was lost.By LouisaAdler for Literotica

Duben v kuchyni i na zahrádce – řeřicha, vejce, vaječný likér i knedlíky s vejci. A k tomu kapka poezie a smysluplné využití všeho. Buďte s námi na další návštěvě u Jiřinky s Alenkou.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

Kopřivě se právem říká český ženšen, protože obsahuje velké množství zdraví prospěšných látek, které blahodárně působí na naše zdraví.

A Butterfly wants to kill the World?Book 3 in 18 parts, By FinalStand. Listen to the ► Podcast at Explicit Novels.Although Love is both fire and shadow, we often forget to take comfort from the coolness of the memories when the burning flames are absentThere were precisely two things, okay, four things, keeping me alive. The fourth thing would come to her later when her 'furious was replaced by her 'curious' ~ as in how I knew her inhuman lingo ~ which would lead to my legacy with Grandpa.The top three reasons -She had poked my chest. It was a challenge, calling for one of my guardians to come out and play. The avatar knew I was the chosen heir of the Goddess Ishara and my goddess had devoted a good deal of time and effort to my survival and continued service in her cause. If Ishara made an 'appearance', it would be enough reason to not eviscerate me for my foul treatment of her august personage.Nope. It seemed Ishara was busy at the moment.Still, she most likely knew SzelAnya had shown a keen interest in me in Romania, though I'd never told Selena, or any other member of the 9 Clans, the Dragon's Daughter had killed Ajax for me. Figuring out SzelAnya, a storm deity, had helped me and Aya escape from our kidnapping in the midst of a cyclone in the Pacific Ocean wasn't much of a reach.But no bolt of lightning coalesced from my chest to singe her finger. No clap of thunder. Not even a cloud with a hint of disfavor appeared above us.Her obsidian fingernail began penetrating my shirt, touched my skin, then drew my blood, and something 'twitched'.That would be Contestant Goddess #3. She wasn't actually hanging around me. She didn't have to. She'd left me a memento of our last shindig before we parted ways. That was the nightmare-inducing episode where she, the chthonic goddess Sarrat Irkalli, had compressed one man's body into a dagger and then proceeded to suck another's soul into it to use as a power source for an Airbus 350 (a commercial airliner, if you didn't know).I still had that snaggletooth-looking thing at my back. Well who the Hell was I going to leave it with? Honestly, the only people I felt could keep it safe I loved too much to curse with it. Anyway, the second her divine claw touched my blood, the long dormant weapon whispered to me in a somewhat bored, lofty feminine voice from beyond the grave,Do you want me to discorporate this pathetic has-been for you?Quick check. Only the avatar and I, and her priestess-savant heard that. Of course, in downtown, New York City, noon Sunday, how weird would such a declaration be? The avatar's eyebrow arched. Her big bat-ears (still looking human to the normal viewing public) flicked this way and that, figuring out precisely where the threat originated from. Slowly, her once poking hand began to slide across my chest, along my ribs and around my back.She touched the dagger. Nothing.Gingerly, she drew it forth. I'd had a makeshift sheath made. As the blade made its journey around me, she took a half-step back to better observe it."Please don't kill him!" Theddy squealed. "We haven't had sex yet!"Being 'who' and 'what' she was, the avatar did what came natural. Fortunately for Theddy, I'd become accustomed to working with psychopaths.She stabbed the dagger at Theddy. I clamped my hand down on her wrist. The claws of her left hand came down on my constraining wrist. My free hand came down on that hand, trying to pry it free. It was a hopeless struggle, except.Yes, my old friend 'except'. Except the avatar was holding the dagger. As powerful as Ītzpāpālōtl was, she wasn't pushing against me. She was pushing against Sarrat Irkalli.Ītzpāpālōtl was a living, breathing terror machine who killed and received sacrifices on a regular basis.Sarrat Irkalli hadn't been actively worshipped in 3,000 years.Uneven contest? Oh yeah.See, Ītzpāpālōtl had spent the past 500 years continuously fighting against the Weave to keep her fingers on this side of reality.Meanwhile, for the most part, Sarrat Irkalli had sat upon her throne in the Sumerian Underworld with hundreds upon hundreds of thousands of souls toiling under her watchful gaze for eternity. Sure, her version of Hell wasn't getting any fresh deposits, but she knew how to milk the system well.Even the bad karma for the dagger's creation wasn't hers. She'd stolen it from the foolish Gong Tau sorcerers who had meant to enslave my soul, aka one-third of the Baraqu-Alal-Cáel deal she'd worked out millennia ago. It was the Weave giving her a 'freebie' for playing by the rules, if you considered the Weave sentient.And now Ītzpāpālōtl was touching it. Whoops. It wasn't as if Ītzpāpālōtl was stupid. It isn't like there are tons of magic weapons running around, much less soul-munchers like the one I had. Rationally, who would give a novice like me, a weapon like this? I say again, 'whoops'.Once I'd figured this out, I couldn't stop being me."Theddy, do you like girls?""What?" she squeaked. Here was this psycho trying to drive a Smilodon incisor into her bosom and I was giving her a sex quiz.Ītzpāpālōtl was really starting to struggle now."I, ah, are you okay?" she continued."Oh, I'm dandy. I'm serious. You think this chick is hot? I mean, would you do her in a three-way?" I proposed casually."Timothy?" Sovann."Bro?" Timothy to me."It's all good. Sovann, you want to know what my life is like? This lady who came to discuss business with me today is an immortal mass murderer. You give the word, I'll let go and this knife is going to cut her up like a Ginsu blade on market day because just cutting her heart out isn't going to be enough. Worse. Eventually she'll get back up.""Timothy?" Sovann repeated, this time with more concern. He thought I was nuts. I released my left hand. The blade flipped up, twisting in the avatar's grasp. That was the point her minions figured out something was wrong."El Amado?" the priestess-savant called out softly. The three goons began reaching for 'things'."Call them off, or I open my other hand," I cautioned the avatar. She spared me a swift, hostile look. My fingers tingled."Esten quietos!" she snapped. They stopped."Cáel, bad day, or not. This isn't you. Stop it. The girl's in danger," Timothy spoke up. He didn't mean Theddy. He meant the avatar."I'm being a real asshole, aren't I?" I sighed."Pretty much. You never let the bitches get to you before. Girl pops an attitude, you smile and move on. Life is too short," he reminded me. Too true."I'm going to put my hand over the blade," I told Ītzpāpālōtl. "When I do, you can let go."She didn't say anything for several seconds, even after my left hand covered the semi-serrated edge."Why should I trust you?" she sizzled."Because 'me' letting anything bad happen to you would make me a total, judgmental jerk. I don't know you. Whatever you did before you showed up today shouldn't matter to me. I acted stupidly. I should have stopped you. I didn't. I didn't even warn you and I could have. I was angry, and not even at you. Just angry and I apologize. Now, let go.""Why?""Hi. I'm Cáel Nyilas. Can I have my knife back? Please?"Blink. She released it. For a millisecond, it wanted to do something else because bitches are bitches. It didn't, so my palm wasn't sliced open. My right hand took the hilt. I carefully put the blade away."Yes," Theddy gulped."Huh?" Sovann shook his head at the sudden evaporation of the life and death tension. Welcome to my life. Theddy meant 'yes' to the 'girl-girl-guy' thing I had proposed earlier. It pays to keep things prioritized."What is this movie you were talking about?" Ītzpāpālōtl asked. Had she forgiven me for anything which had transpired? Bwahahaha, no way. She was taking the initiative and going with Option 1 from my earlier insane diatribe."Wait!" Sovann nearly shouted. "You nearly, I don't know, threatened Cáel's life and tried to stab Theddy and now you think you can go with us to a movie?""I told you," Timothy put an arm around his shoulder, "life with Cáel is rarely dull.""I thought you meant he was fun to party with, or something like that," Sovann looked up at his lover. "I thought his uncle showing up, and trying to kill him and then being blown the fuck away by those women and federal agents, and that other girl who pointed a gun at us, is this the new normal?""I love you, Sovann," Timothy grew compassionate. "Cáel is my best friend. He'd never deliberately hurt either of us and normal friends are something he has in short supply. Today being a great case in point."Ten seconds passed."The title is 'As Above, So Below'," Sovann addressed the avatar, "and what do we call you?"Since 'if you are not a worshiper and addressing me, I normally am about to kill you' would sound really cool in Olmec-ic, but I might be asked to translate,"How about we go with 'Obsidian', please?" I pleaded with her.She knew I was currying favor now ~ and behaving like a weather vane caught in the wall of a tornado ~ she gave a gracious bow of her head."Obsidian will do for now. Is the Legend of the dagger 'business'?" Translation: it had better not be."No," I smiled. "It's pillow talk." Rancor, 'how presumptuous', followed by 'but that dagger ups the count to three Goddess interested in him', and next to recalling all the trivial babble about me being a sexual dynamo (I prayed my PR was that good) having some relevance. Her chimera emotions allowed me to get a few more crucial words out, because even women who aren't sleeping with me are jealous."Esta mujer fue la primera en ofrecer bienes funerarios tras la muerte dee mi padre," I reinserted Theddy back into my close company. For some reason, Obsidian considered me unreliable thus had to verify what I'd just said."Did you make funerary offering upon his father's passing?" she asked Theddy. Let's think about this. The wacko chick questioning Theddy had tried to stab a huge freaking blade into her not a minute ago. Fleeing in terror while screaming for the cops? Nope."Yes. I baked him some walnut and caramel chip cookies," she nodded. "It is a family recipe." Sovann looked over the three of us, then back to Timothy."I told you 'that's impressive cocking like I've never seen before'," he explained."She may remain," Obsidian 'permitted'. Theddy wrapped up my right arm with her left and gave it a squeeze. She wanted attention/explanation."Obsidian is a Master Vampire, Theddy," I leaned in and whispered. "Before she was turned, she was captured in a raid by the fey, mentally, spiritually and physically raped and made into their sex-slave. Part of her spirit never healed properly. While this imperfection allows her to walk around in daylight, her heart can never hold on to any emotion for long, so she is forced to forever seek passion, no matter how dangerous, from the world around her."Revealing secrets? Ha. I had noticed Theddy had every work done by Laurel K. Hamilton in her place, including the comic book series."You are not supposed to know, so act like I didn't tell you anything, okay?"'Okay,' she mouthed back at me. I could see it in her eyes. My chaotic life suddenly 'made sense' to her because a best-selling fiction author said so.Obsidian thought the movie was; hilarious. She couldn't stop snickering, giggling and poking at me as horrible shit happened to the various actors. She thought the plot was 'insightful' and wouldn't stop whispering to me throughout the entire thing. During the closing credits, I told her I'd get her the DVD for Christmas ~ she knew the concept behind digital technology, but didn't own any ~ she kissed me.The first kiss was fierce and joyous with the added benefit of her tongue doing things no normal tongue could do, it stretched. Not sure how I felt about that. The second kiss was more sultry, longer and came with some accompanying body action which, I'm no virgin. Not even close. She was on my left side, so when she twisted in her seat, her left leg insinuated itself between mine. Her left hand cupped my jaw and held my head in place as her lips played along mine.A dance of the scorpion perhaps? Tender at first, then suddenly stabbing, dominant and brutal. My lips and tongue battled back, using my superior Kiss-fu to nullify her natural strength and agility. She liked it. By her moaning, she liked it a lot. As the kiss progressed, more and more of her flowed from her seat into my seat, body facing me. Her body rose over mine, forcing my neck back to maintain contact."So, Dot Ishara is hovering around somewhere close, isn't she?" I murmured as our lips separated barely a centimeter apart. One chick kissing you to make another one jealous. It's happened to me plenty of times. Obsidian didn't give a damn about Theddy, or any other mortal woman in close proximity so,"Yes," she purred. "Do you mate with her?""A man does not brag of such things, but no, unless heavy petting counts?""What will she do to you when I steal your seed?"'When'? Why was I not surprised? Why was I not surprised another concussion was in my immediate future either? Was it possible I was, learning?"Chastise me for not fighting harder," I breathed across her lips, "and, in case you forgot, I'm on a date with the girl beside me.""Who I care nothing for," she sent a cruelly playful look Theddy's way. Wisely, the girl shivered."Who I am indebted to and how I honor my debts might matter to you," I hazarded. My words hurt Theddy's feelings. That was on purpose. Obsidian took pleasure in me hurting Theddy because she was basically a vicious monster."Yes?" I pressed her gently."Yes," Obsidian allowed, easing up slightly both romantically and physically."And Theddy, if you believe I'm with you solely because of some sense of obligation, you clearly haven't been listening to your recordings," I shot the human girl a wink."Oh.""Am I, or am I not, a sex-obsessed little monkey?" I teased her. Theddy giggled. I paid for my diversion with four obsidian claws to my ribs outside of Theddy's view. After all, it wasn't like Theddy could possibly compete with her for my attention. Considering Obsidian's legendary ability to rip open her opponent's ribcages and feast upon their hearts, I slipped my left hand, the one next to her between her legs and stroked her cotton-slacks covered cunt.Theddy hugged my right arm and put her head against my shoulder. Not to be outdone," Qu  un centenar dee hombres se quemaron vivos como el sonido?" Obsidian inquired with sexually sadistic hunger. Ah, memories of burning 7P Commandos.Whoops. Theddy knew Spanish."No lo s . Ten an respiradores en," I replied casually. "Si lo desea, puedo describir lo que se siente al tirar de una flecha de guerra lanzar mi propio muslo.""Eep," slipped out of Theddy's lips."Why did you do that?" Obsidian looked over us both."Well, I was showing a little girl I believed in her,""And she shot you?" Theddy gulped."No. She hit the target I was standing next to. A co-worker mistook me for a cardboard cutout of a Jehovah's Witness and let fly. Seems she had issues with organized religion as well as a reaction to the oscillation effect of florescent lighting and ceiling fans.""But why did you pull the arrow out?" Theddy asked. "Couldn't you wait until you got to the hospital?""Mosquito," Obsidian menaced, insinuating Theddy was a pest."I wasn't thinking rationally at the moment, I work in an asylum, I had a hot date in a few hours, any of those three will do," I smiled at Theddy."Copil such as Cáel don't bother with petty human conventions," Obsidian turned my gaze back her way with her hand on my jaw. 'Copil's were 'god-touched' in her lingo."More than one girl?" Theddy mused."Four.""Okay," she sighed happily."Theddy, three under-age girls and the police office he was dating acting as their chaperone," Timothy intervened. "He hurried home so he could keep a promise to the children, not for sex." Bastard. He really was my best friend. He didn't mention my post-injury, pre-festivity sex with Odette giving me a few extra, urgently needed Brownie Points to suggest I might be a decent human being."You are a wonderful guy," Theddy ran a fingernail over my free hand. Clearly I was 'wonderful' enough to risk Obsidian's anger over. The screen went blank as the last credits scrolled away and the room was plunged into darkness. Five seconds later, the lights snapped on.Pain!"Fuck," I hissed. It wasn't any extra physical trauma causing me discomfort. No, a metaphysical dam had burst within and my stream of conscious thought had been turned into a white-water rapids. The competing cyclones of thoughts in my mind had stopped cooperating and my hypothalamus was letting me know I was in danger."Cáel", "Cáel", "Bro", and "Ishara" all came in rapid succession. I needed some space both tangible and social."I need to step outside," I eased Obsidian off me and stood up. My sense of my personal danger was ratcheting up. While I had been studying Obsidian, so I could screw her, I had discovered more and more Alal-badness.The light display had ignited a series of pressing implanted memories which had been clamoring for my attention. Things like not all 'divinities' were stewards of the Weave. Some even wanted its destruction, preferring risking all on a chaotic restructuring of reality over what existed now ~ things like Obsidian. They weren't attempting to do so because they thought they had no chance.But there was. A real serious chance to unravel reality existed; and it was staring her in the face. It wasn't 'me' as in 'I was the Anti-Christ'. But with the torrent of memories pouring forth, I knew where the peril lay and I was completely responsible for it. Hell, I was a prime ally of Armageddon and hadn't even known it.'Holy Shit!'I blinked. Timothy was shaking me. We were out in the lobby."Oh my God, Timothy," I nearly wept. "What am I going to do?""I have no idea what you are talking about. Is there someone you can talk to about this?" he suggested. Normal folks were around us. Obsidian was at my side. Sovann was behind Timothy with an arm around Theddy's shoulder."Theddy," I looked at her. "Can I catch up with you later? I just realized I've screwed up something fierce." I put my best 'really don't want to go but I gotta' face on. Her worried look brightened, she slipped around Timothy and gave me a tingling French kiss."I'll hold you to that, Cáel," she murmured when we parted."Timothy, go home, I got shit to deal with," I hoped my grin didn't become as feeble as I felt it to be."I," he started to say something. "Time not to ask questions?""Yeah.""Okay.""Wait." I pulled us to the side and went on to my toes, leaned in and whispered in his ear, "Tell Pamela 'he' sent Ajax to kill the Professor, his family and the sisters. They were the targets all along. It wasn't me, or the other women. Just in case,""Okay," Timothy patted my arm. It was cryptic. It was the best I could do. See, I wanted to cry so badly.{2:09 pm Sunday, September 7th ~ Last day}Where to begin:Every mythology across the globe has some creature, or creatures, which threatens Existence. Usually a God, or a Hero-God, slays the creature and everything is right with the world, except such a being, being older than Existence itself, can't really die, so they are carved up, buried ~ what have you.Illuyankamunus was one such manifestation of this underlying cancerous desire to destroy reality. He'd had a far more real child, SzelAnya, and she's never quite given up on her dad. Of far greater critical importance, she was 'part' of Illuyankamunus, somewhat in the way I was part of Alal and Baraqu. And yes, that meant all the offspring of Bolu, the guy I'd praised a few hours earlier, held the seeds of that malignant deity as well.And Alal knew it. He hadn't been killing off the descendants. He'd left that task up to a group far more capable of the task, the Egyptian Rite, who knew a fucking threat to existence when they saw it. Lest I forget, No secret society are the 'good guys'. Also lest I forget, I alone decided to go after the Arinniti sons to fulfill Vranus' quest. I had no divine mandate I was aware of nor any real world orders.Inadvertently, I had rounded up the last five mortal remains of Illuyankamunus in one place for convenient disposal in a remote Transylvanian town. The only problem was: if someone didn't get to them quickly, I was also about to whisk them into the loving (and heavy-armed) protective embrace of the Amazon Host, where the completion of centuries of culling would have suddenly become a cast-iron bitch instead of a simple disposal.Enter Ajax. Yeah, I bet the Egyptians were trying to figure out how I stopped him as well as Alal. I thought I was being clever by not telling most of the world. In fact, they most likely suspected; and the reality of SzelAnya watching over me was much more terrifying. Ishara had put a serious curse on the Amazons, yet her curse only affected her followers, the Amazons, who were fair game.SzelAnya had killed someone for me, and I hadn't been one of her followers. Thus I had committed a blasphemous act only a magician of some significant ability could have managed. I wasn't a sorcerer, but I had a cornucopia of mystic knowledge rolling around in my noggin. Trying to figure all this out was one of my major headaches.The others?I even suspected I knew who betrayed me ~ kinda. They didn't do it on purpose. At least I hope they didn't, because my odds-on favorite was my Mother by way of Captain Delilah Faircloth. Realistically, there was only one secret society who might help her against Grandpa and that was the Egyptian Rite, and they did send three people to Dad's funeral including two 'somebodies'. I'm an idiot.I'd chatted away in fluent New Kingdom Egyptian and it never occurred to me how odd it was for two of them to also be so fluent in it. Know it, sure, but as fluent as Kimberly had taught me to be? That should have been a Red Flag.The Earth & Sky had sent Iskender, who should have been the benchmark I judged the other delegations by, damn it.Three Condos? They'd killed my Dad and their guys had been flunkies.The 7 Pillars had been nobodies, which they'd proven by their inaction.Now I had to question why I had 3 actual  9-Clans  assassins at my dad's funeral too. Holy Ishara, I wasn't nearly paranoid enough.Anyway, why would the Amazons be aiding and abetting the End of All Life on Earth? Normally, they wouldn't be, but 3000 years ago, the majority of Human life did a colossal dump on the Amazons. And when they needed help, they got it in the form of SzelAnya and her dual-sex followers. I seriously doubt they told the Amazons their purpose was to resurrect SzelAnya's daddy. I imagine the Amazons didn't pry too much either.It turned out almost to be okay. During the 2nd Betrayal, the Amazons betrayed SzelAnya and almost short-circuited her plans by exterminating her lineage.Except for the Arinniti elders and Bolu. Good old 'except'.I can imagine when the Egyptians heard about the 2nd Betrayal, they figured they were 'okay'. Those wacky Amazons had inadvertently done the world a favor. Except an act of maternal love kept a slender hope of Illuyankamunus' return alive. By the time the Egyptians realized they'd been prematurely hopeful, Bolu's descendants were all over the Balkans and hunting them down had proven difficult.But, it gets worse. Much worse.When those Gods shattered Illuyankamunus, they scattered him in the relative certainty no one would ever gather the parts back together.His flesh was scattered across the land, modern day Turkey, but encompassing everything from Pakistan to Italy and Egypt to Poland. The flesh became soil, then plants, the things that eat plants, then food for humans. Get the picture.Whoops. SzelAnya had been doing just that for centuries upon centuries every time she mated with a mortal of Illuyankamunus' line and had offspring, they accumulated his energy, which made hunting down the few remaining ones easier to find, since they were 'beacons of badness', except...There were two key pieces missing which SzelAnya could never get. After all, you would think burying them on the far side of the world would matter, right?The 'breath of Illuyankamunus' ~ his cosmic fire ~ they buried in a volcano in a distant land far across the Great Sea. His spirit 'body' they imprisoned in a great river, again, across the Great Sea.But wait, it gets worse.The being standing next to me knew precisely where the 'breath of Illuyankamunus' was. Seems Mesoamerica is laced with volcanos. They'd discovered 'the breath' long ago and used it as a weapon called Xiuhcoatl. Better yet, Alal suspected she and her buddies were more than happy to reunite it with the rest if they thought the Weave itself wouldn't annihilate them for daring to do so.In their current, weakened state they were vulnerable to such a karmic backlash. In theory, a reborn Illuyankamunus would have access to power beyond the bounds of the Weave, older and more terrifying. Still, without the mortal remains to anchor the energy, giving it to the spirit would be pointless.Alal knew where the spirit body was (in general), but that wasn't the worst part. The worst part was where it was,Of all the places the Arinniti sons could have fled to, they had to choose Brazil, the burial place of the restive spirit body of Illuyankamunus. Mother-fucker.And Ildiko 'Alkonyka' aka Dusk Lovasz had sworn she'd travel to Brazil to fulfill Bolu's side of the quest in the same way I was holding up Vranus' end. If I tried to stop her, SzelAnya would know something was up. Fuck.I was processing all of this when Obsidian violently yanked me out of the way. A cabby had swerved to avoid a flurry of trash and nearly run over us. It was the third near-concussive experience in the past five minutes she'd help me avoid while she had walked by my side. I'd been mumbling like a madman."That would be my Goddess wanting to talk with me," I looked her way."I know," she gave me a clever smile."She's really not going to like that," I shook my head."I know that too," she kept smiling. "Where is your mind?""Five lives away from making the world a safer place," I sighed."Safer for who?" she purred. Where were all the bimbos? Not only was it an insightful question, it cut straight to the heart of my dilemma.What decision could I make? If I elected to help my fellow Amazons, I risked screwing with the world. In truth, I was risking everything even if I did nothing. Well Dad was always clear that things didn't change by themselves. You needed to do something that would have an effect. So, 'What are you going to do?'More to the point, I wasn't Grandad. Killing the last five of the line of Illuyankamunus wasn't 'me', so it wasn't going to be something I'd worry about.SzelAnya wanted to bring back her Dad, I could understand that. I'd have to figure out a way for her to believe this world sticking around was more important. How? Well, I had a goddess-like creature right in front of me to probe for ideas."You are an immortal," Obsidian commented. She'd been weighing her opinion for some time. I could tell by the wonderment with which she gifted each word."What? No. I can die.""No. I don't think so. Your wounds. Normally the wounds I inflict flow freely for some time. Yours have already scabbed over," her eyes flickered to the various minor scars she'd imparted to me in the few hours we'd been together.Of course, her idea was insane, Oh God No! I was in Grandad's body. Well Duh! His body was supposed to be immortal."Are you sure?" I looked deep into her eyes."You are a young immortal, the youngest I've ever met, but you are an immortal," she seemed to be convincing herself as much as me.Stupid Assumption (on my part)! I wasn't in Alal's body. I was in Cáel's. Because the Cáel soul shard was young, Alal hadn't been able to find it because it had moved through Time, to me, sonofabitch! 'I' hadn't been around for him to find. No! I was making yet another damn assumption.What did I know? When Pamela found Baraqu, it had been in an object, not a person, though she had been short on details. When the Alal-shard went to the Land of the Endless Black Sands to bring Saku back, the Cáel-shard had been in reality, so it had been allowed to create a body, 'me'. Still, the curse Sarrat Irkalli placed on Baraqu was on Alal and myself as well, which meant I might just be immortal.My Alal-mind agreed with Obsidian's assessment. In his first years, his healing had been slow, still taking days for what took mortal people weeks. I'd stupidly attributed my swift recovery to Amazon medicines, ugh. Because I got wounded more than most Security Detail trainees while concurrently entertaining two and three sex partners."Can you talk with Dot Ishara?" I asked her."Yes, but why would I?""Sex?""We are going to have sex anyway," she smiled. I'd tricked her. Set her up with the right so I could now drop her with the left."I can bring the mbo  tat  back to life," I pledged. That was not what she was expecting at all. "If you bring the Xiuhcoatl, I can bring the flesh and we can unite the three." Mbo  tat  was the Tupi name for the legendary 'fiery serpent' of the Amazon Basin. In Portuguese, it had become Boi-tat , a will-o-wisp with a confused, Christianized mythology ~ a serpent dwelling in darkness, devouring the eyes of corpses, glowing in the forests at night."Where is the flesh?" she whispered."In his mortal children," I replied."Who?""You are a monster, Ītzpāpālōtl. I'm not going to tell you and you don't have the time to drag the information out of my mind before my allies drop on you like a nuclear detonation," I drew my body tightly to her."Why would the Amazons do this?""They are not. This is a deal between you and me," I kissed her lips. I pulled back. A few seconds later she kissed me back."Why?""My grandfather had my father murdered and I would avenge him. In the end, despite my father's Amazon heritage, my 'Sisters' will let his death go unavenged for the greater good of the Host. He was a man and they will never look beyond that ~ they will never value his life as they would that of a woman.""Your mother's father?""Yes. Cáel O'Shea of the Illuminati.""We are not at war with the Illuminati," she murmured. It was a casual observation, not a protest."You are at war with Cáel O'Shea.""He was slain.""He didn't stay dead.""You know much more than you are saying," she was finally catching on."Absolutely.""I need much more than a few names to convince my kin to help," she purred, a cocktail of sexual immersion and flesh-flaying pain."I don't work for you. You are agreeing to work for me," I was hard as iron in more than one way. Why? Boundaries. She lived in a world where only the fundamentals of reality constrained her. Having a human, no matter how polished my pedigree, or how much I might appear to be 'special', tell her 'you are not the boss' in a reasonable fashion was new and very unwelcome."What would make you think that?""My mentor taught me knowledge is a curse. It is our inability to forget, and I can see into your soul, Ītzpāpālōtl. You care not one wit for the life of an assassin. But the thought of the other 'Factors' of the 9 Clans treating you as an equal galls you almost as much as the crushing reality that you need them."You have lived 500 years in chains and I'm offering you a desperate grab at freedom," I added."Your brief glimpse of immortality gives you no insight into my existence," she bristled."Oh, how many have given up? How many have decided the fight was no longer worth it and faded from the Sunlight to make their final trip into the Underworld, never to return? Do you even visit them?" I spoke with a voice tinged with compassion and loss. I pulled upon the pitiless, blank memories of a childless Alal all those centuries and imprinted on them my own fears of fatherhood and failure."How do you know so much?" she let her fa ade crack, then blow away, in the hollowness of her own sorrow. How could I pity such a monster? I could because I was me and I wouldn't surrender that to the barbaric past and most likely horrific future. I pulled her close, resting my chin on the top of her head."You are not the first, wonderful, very bright woman who has stepped into my life, Obsidian," I whispered. "You are not even the first divinity. For all the millions of differences enforced by power and time, I think love, hate and the conflict between the two wear upon us all. If anything, you face an endless parade of hope and misery. Even if you chose to ignore it, you have seen it and perhaps it leaves its marks ~ water scarring the rocks of a riverbed."We paused. I was able to peripherally scan about and realize we'd made it to Central Park ~ the Ramble and off the beaten path."Your Goddess is a fool for not keeping you closer," she murmured."She does keep me close. You have been actively keeping me from her," I reminded my guest. "She also plays by the rules, so is of limited help in my plans for vengeance."Translation: I could enlist Ītzpāpālōtl's aid while still remaining loyal to my matron Goddess. Ishara could not provide what I needed and my Amazons wouldn't agree with my scheme, so I needed her. Three hours ago, she wouldn't have considered me a worthy supplicant, much less an allied equal, yet here she was conspiring with me to shake the foundations of Creation.Personally, I was thanking Mamitu, Destiny. Had I not been having my worst Sunday ever when we first crossed paths and then acted like a total cockhead, pissed her off and led her to holding Sarrat Irkalli's dagger, thus putting her life in my hands, and not had Timothy as a best friend, I wouldn't have taken her to the movie, and my mind wouldn't have wandered down those dark corridors of Alal's memories to piece things together.Whatever itinerary Obsidian had approached me with, my abrasive behavior had forced her to it cast aside. Dagger, movie, revelations, I was now so much more in her eyes than she had envisioned."Share my need and share with me an ounce of your sorrow," I murmured to her as I gently curled my fingers in her hair and directed her head up until she faced me."The dagger," she rumbled. While she was stroking my hard-on, I knew she was using it as a double meaning."I was pinned to an onyx sacrificial table," I began my tale. We worked off pants to mid-thigh then 'got busy'. Penetration was only going to be possible by turning her around. Ground-breaking was her ready acceptance of my instruction. I leaned against a tree, then pulled her onto my lap. She guided my phallus home.One locomotion and I sunk in deep. It was warm molasses until I hit and pressed against her cervix. For a second Obsidian trembled, then her muscles clamped down tightly, gripping my manhood firmly in a vise, keeping me still."Ah," I groaned. Obsidian had her neck twisted, so we were kissing with eye contact as I described my adventures with the Gong tau sorcerers. She shot me a quick twinkle of delight, a connection. She'd relayed physical pleasure in the way I was giving her cerebral gratification, aka hope.I rolled up her shirt, and gave both nipples a brutal tweak in response. She gasped. I was applying a little 'rough' with my tender intercourse. She rolled her tush against my groin, an invitation to double-down on my nipple-play. I kept my left hand working over each tit while working my fingernails down her abdomen. As I described the terror in old Tsu's face as he shouted out 'M iyǒu! (Mandarin for 'No!') as he recognized too late the curse he was invoking. She relished the visual of the Han necromancer's terror.'Me' smacking two fingers down on her clit earned me a squeal and a small gush of fluids on my nut-sack. Her look of astonishment was something I'd always cherish. Before me, sex was something she demanded from her followers/victims and definitely orchestrated. Her partners being fearful/worshipful must have limited their initiative."A-a-a-ah, we are being observed," she groaned, her lips less than an inch from mine. It took me a second."Which direction?" I kept pumping her, strumming her clit and treating her tit like taffy on a hot Coney Island summer afternoon. Her hooded eyes flickered to our right. I gave it ten seconds. I had to get Obsidian refocused on what I was going to do to her next, in case this was innocent voyeurism. Nope. It was Chaz.Why Chaz? See, I'm an idiot. My cryptic warning to Timothy for Pamela had been good for all of one minute. He'd called her and she'd gathered what she could and come looking for me.Why was she concerned? I was babbling to Timothy then wandering off with a 'beyond-freaky' chick I had just met named 'Obsidian' who came my way courtesy of another chick with the name of Estere.Let me see, Estere was Hashashin and for Timothy to describe someone in my life as 'beyond freaky' was bad news. Timothy was seriously worried about me and Timothy was an emotional rock ~ he didn't panic. Lest we forget, I was in a federal taskforce. A quick peek into New York traffic cameras revealed me and Obsidian wandering into Central Park from the south, so in the rescue party went, splitting up and Chaz 'lucked-out'.I still had two, no, three problems. I was really enjoying my sexual excursion with Obsidian and she was seeming to truly enjoy her experience with me. Oh, and Central Park is big, Pamela had been pressed for people, so she had pressed some unlikely participants into my rescue party."He's," smooch, "my brother, by adoption," I headed off the whole idea she'd been briefed on me already."Visual, Peacekeeper Six, OS2, L-11," Chaz muttered into his headset before taking up a casual stance on the path overlooking our trysting spot. Sex with an audience didn't bother her, so, we worked out as much action from twist, turns and two inches of in-and-out motions (she liked to keep our bodies tight) as we could. Obsidian was humming along in no time. Her vaginal walls were undulating, wearing away at my self-control.Panting, not from us,"Is he o, are they, who is she?" huffed and puffed a trio of voices from Chaz's locale. Oh. Pamela had recruited my 'Hounds'.I accidently (from a timing perspective) took that moment to grind my nails into her left nipple, pinched her clit and hammered her as hard as I could. Obsidian howled. Her vocalization exited the human realm in a cataclysmic manner.The noise scared avians a mile away into terrorized flight. Cats hissed, then raced for cover. Dogs tucked tail and ran. Streetlights a hundred yards away shattered in sprays of glass. Better yet, for the entertainment of my viewing public, she lashed out with her right hand at the closest Black Cherry sapling, exploding it into a mist of sap and pulverizing the bark and wood fiber into pulp.On the downside, her cervix gave my balls an ultimatum ~ release my seed at once, or she was going to twist off my head. My cock and balls have a long history of making decisions without me. I began lavishing her. Before I finally got the feeling I was out of the danger zone. She was back to rubbing against me and purring in blissful satisfaction."Onun g zleri," whispered Belgin, one of the Turks. 'Her eyes'?"Cáel, are you aware of the alternative nature of your liaison?" Chaz coolly cautioned me. Translation: 'mate, do you know you have your cock in a demon?'"Yeah," I coughed. I had a face full of her hair. I was working on some post-coital nuzzling along with slowly helping her get her pants back up."Ininzqueoccehpa," she hummed to me, ignoring our gathering. That was 'let's do this again'."Tehuatlcochitlehua," I replied with some fondness. She studied me for a second before deciding my term was one of endearment, thus 'you are what dreams are made of', not 'nightmares'.Obsidian had another issue to deal with. Timothy would call it a righteous cocking. Whatever it was, her hold on her human mein had slipped and her inhumanity was slipping through, mainly in her glass-like, black, multi-facetted eyes and her fingers which now ended in molten obsidian talons. On the subconscious level, her predatory nature was setting everyone close-by on edge. I could also make out the high pitched, ultrasonic pipping of her chiropteran cries ~ purpose unknown.Obsidian made her way off farther into the underbrush leaving me a few precious seconds to appreciate her retreating posterior while holstering my equipment. More people were arriving. I had one more thing to take care of before, oh look, Nikita had brought her Mom along, the NYPD Sergeant."Chaz, I need to have a quick chat with Dot before I can explain things. She's been waiting and that's unwise," I looked to the Brit. He nodded."Cáel? Mr. Nyilas? Prince?" all came my way. I relaxed as best I could. Chaz went to a body blow to stagger me, then an epic upper cut to send me to Lullaby Land.Dot & the DragonessDot and SzelAnya, in dragon form, were waiting as I tumbled forward. By the state of my haziness, I knew my unconsciousness wouldn't last long."You gave her your seed," came the accusation."Yes," I staggered, "and now you should be able to track her," I pointed out the bonus part of the arrangement. No comment."I've got to make this quick, SzelAnya, I've found your father, geographically speaking," I dropped the bomb."Don't," Dot Ishara commanded. After all, she and her divine cohorts had done the killing and corpse-dividing eons ago. Undoubtedly, they'd executed their own oaths to one another to 'never reveal what they had done' as well."Too late," I shook my head. SzelAnya's attention was magnetized. "I owe you and I'm paying my debts. I'm not blind to the dangers, believe me.""You have no idea what power you are invoking," Dot's undercurrent of displeasure was the worst I'd experienced."Wrong. I've got thousands of years of Alal boiling around in my head, Plus the rest of you betrayed her 2600 years ago. It doesn't mean I have to. And now, given the chance, I'm not. Even if you kill me, she's got enough toBack in the Ramble"Really expect me to believe," Nikita's mom was growling."Man down," I waved a weak arm skyward."Mr. Nyilas, what is going on here?" the Sergeant addressed me. I was reclining in a circle of my 'Hounds'; most were kneeling. Chaz was in a tiny bit of trouble for having clocked me."Umm, thanks for coming out and looking for me. I assure you, Mr. Tomorrow did what he did as a matter of his professional duties ~ intelligence gathering." As I struggled to stand, my ladies helped me. I saw Pamela with three Hounds coming up fast from one direction and Virginia with three more coming from the other. The gang was all here.The mutterings in non-English tongues suggested a bit of explaining was already going on."You've been bleeding," Nikita pointed out with an unspoken 'again'."This?" I pulled my shirt out and looked at the first bloodstain of my encounter. "This is the just the start of the bad news." I shed my windbreaker and then t-shirt.The professionals shouldered aside the others to take a closer look."All of these are from noon and less than an hour ago," I identified the damage. Sarge was skeptical. Chaz, Nikita and Virginia less so."They look older," the senior lawman noted."I've been curious about that," Chaz frowned."I've inherited my Grandfather's curse. My soul fragment was in the 'Here and Now' twenty-three years ago while his was, 'over there', so I was allowed to come into creation. According to my recently departed guest,""You are immortal," Virginia mumbled to finish the thought. Had the speaker not been a member of the FBI, who knows how the thought would have been received."From the memories I've been gifted with," I tapped the tiny divot on my forehead, "his healing abilities started out rather slowly too. I certainly don't want to test this theory, so no worries there," I scanned the group."How do you explain seeing your Grandfather in Hungary and again in Rome?" Virginia wondered."Again, that woman who just left," I got out."Was no woman," Nuray, another one of my Turkish Hounds interrupted. "Her eyes..." she tried to explain, "and look what she did to that tree," she pointed to the greatest piece of evidence of supernatural wrongdoing. The other two witnesses nodded."We all saw the same thing. Her eyes were, bottomless, definitely not human," Belgin affirmed. The veteran players looked to Chaz."She had a collapsed nose-bridge, lacked a blink response, her dental work was carnivorous and her tongue was extremely clipped and showed prehensile qualities," he reported calmly. Pause. Chaz was a freaking intelligence operative, after all."If her hands were a type of glove weaponry, I've never seen it s like before. While I know it is possible for a human to exert the force-pounds necessary to snap a two inch diameter tree trunk in one blow, it is a rare skill and requires intense discipline. This appeared to be done spontaneously, without preparation of any kind and as a reaction to other stimuli," he added."It was also your assessment he needed to be knocked unconscious?" Nikita's mom countered."Mr. Nyilas' psychological constructs are something the whole team has to work around. At times, he seeks 'insight' from his mind in a deliberately unconscious/non-sleep state," he replied."He claims to be talking with spirit powers. I know when he returns to consciousness, he delivers useful intelligence. I'm not a psychologist, psychiatrist, or psychic. I don't know why his mind functions that way. I do know results. And I know I work with people who would achieve those results by other means if it were at all possible. Since we haven't found another method, we accept that from tim

Jaro je tu! Probereme jarní únavu, očistu těla, domácí úklid i recept na rychlé těstoviny. A víte, kdo je pták roku 2025? Na všechno odpoví Jiřinka s Alenkou.

Zapomnětlivost nebo kouzlo dveří? Jak skořice pomáhá rostlinám, proč si udělat langoše a kde se vzal kečup? Buďte s námi na další návštěvě u Jiřinky s Alenkou.

Březen je měsíc knihy a s ním přichází i inspirace z domácích knihoven. Jaké poklady objevily Jiřinka s Alenkou? Praktické rady, zajímavosti a recept na česnekové brambory.

The basket of bread often appears before you even place your order and is never listed on the final bill. How did restaurants get started giving away free food?The Surgeon General's recent New York Times op-ed, warning of the potential harm social media can have on young people, provocatively equated internet risks to smoking cigarettes. This isn't the first time the Surgeon General has had a problem with online content … and their names are Inky, Pinky, Blinky, and Clyde. It's an endless quest to  catch sales of Coca-Cola's popular Sprite, PepsiCo recently rebranded Sierra Mist as Starry. Of course, that's not the whole story…http://www.commutethepodcast.comFollow Commute:Instagram - instagram.com/commutethepodcast/Twitter - @PodcastCommuteFacebook - facebook.com/commutethepodcast

Dýňové škvarky, popeleční středa a absint! Co nesmíte dělat 5. března a proč pít místo svěcené vody absint? Přijďte na další návštěvu k Jiřince s Alenkou.

Sedm pramenů, které dokázaly léčit neduhy ledvin, jater, zažívacího ústrojí i revmatismus, vyvěrá na úpatí Apalačských hor v Pensylvánii. Na konci 18. století tam vznikly lázně, které byly po 200 let vyhledávaným místem pacientů z vyšších společenských vrstev. O blaho těla se v Bedford Springs pečuje dodnes, i když už se tamní minerálka nepije.

Sedm pramenů, které dokázaly léčit neduhy ledvin, jater, zažívacího ústrojí i revmatismus, vyvěrá na úpatí Apalačských hor v Pensylvánii. Na konci 18. století tam vznikly lázně, které byly po 200 let vyhledávaným místem pacientů z vyšších společenských vrstev. O blaho těla se v Bedford Springs pečuje dodnes, i když už se tamní minerálka nepije.Všechny díly podcastu Zápisník zahraničních zpravodajů můžete pohodlně poslouchat v mobilní aplikaci mujRozhlas pro Android a iOS nebo na webu mujRozhlas.cz.

Gas Giants and Deep Water. Purple systems continue to deliver but exploration comes at a cost.

Found an emotional and powerful post from Inky Johnson (@inkyjohnson)  where he brought up the fact that we don't hear too much about - “Amazing souls don't just happen.”  I think we all know people that can be called “beautiful souls”. People that just do good things. They encourage, are kind, help others, are giving, full of compassion and encouragement for others. Inky brings up the fact that they just don't happen. They come from spots in life that had tough moments, heartbreak, pain, suffering, etc.  This is a great reminder for us to not only look for & acknowledge these people that we are blessed to have in life, but to also be one ourselves for others. The world needs this more than ever!  Thanks for listening.  Please take a few moments to subscribe & share this with someone, also leave a 5 Star rating on Apple Podcasts and ITunes or other services where you find this show.  Find me on Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/coachtoexpectsuccess/   on Twitter / “X”:  @coachtosuccess   and on Instagram at:  @coachjohndaly  - My YouTube Channel is at: Coach John Daly.   Email me at: CoachJohnDalyPodcast@gmail.com     You can also head on over to https://www.coachtoexpectsuccess.com/ and get in touch with me there on my homepage along with checking out my Top Book list too.  Other things there on my site are being worked on too.  Please let me know that you are reaching out to me from my podcast.  

Boot up your scientific curiosity as we pixelate the paranormal with Inky, the blue ghost from Pac-Man. We'll analyze the quantum mechanics of wall-phasing, debate the thermodynamics of perpetual motion in a maze, and calculate the caloric value of power pellets. Our team of digital cryptozoologists will theorize whether this spectral sprite is a manifestation of quantum superposition, a glitch in the universal matrix, or just the fever dream of an overworked game designer. From arcade cabinets to cultural icon, we'll explore why this blocky blue specter continues to haunt our digital imaginations. Remember, in Pac-Man's world, no one can hear you scream... but they might hear you go "waka-waka" as you're assimilated into the game.Unlock an ad-free podcast experience with Caloroga Shark Media! Get all our shows on any player you love, hassle free! For Apple users, hit the banner on your Apple podcasts app. For Spotify or other players, visit caloroga.com/plus. No plug-ins needed!Subscribe now for exclusive shows like 'Palace Intrigue,' and get bonus content from Deep Crown (our exclusive Palace Insider!) Or get 'Daily Comedy News,' and '5 Good News Stories' with no commercials! Plans start at $4.99 per month, or save 20% with a yearly plan at $49.99. Join today and help support the show!We now have Merch!  FREE SHIPPING! Check out all the products like T-shirts, mugs, bags, jackets and more with logos and slogans from your favorite shows! Did we mention there's free shipping? Get 10% off with code NewMerch10 Go to Caloroga.comGet more info from Caloroga Shark Media and if you have any comments, suggestions, or just want to get in touch our email is info@caloroga.com

Prudký nárůst energie a pak náhlý útlum, vykresluje působení tyčinek a rychlých cukrů autorka Svačinkové bichle, která pro rodiče shromáždila na dvě stě tipů, jak svačit lépe. „Když jim dáme svačinu, která je vyvážená, která jim drží hladinu energie po celé dopoledne, tak jim prospějeme daleko víc,“ zamýšlí se Pavlína Mähringová dilematem zodpovědnosti a potěšení. Jakým způsobem rozšiřuje jídelníček u svých dětí? A co může pomoci dospělým, kteří svačiny odbývají?Všechny díly podcastu Host Lucie Výborné můžete pohodlně poslouchat v mobilní aplikaci mujRozhlas pro Android a iOS nebo na webu mujRozhlas.cz.

Prudký nárůst energie a pak náhlý útlum, vykresluje působení tyčinek a rychlých cukrů autorka Svačinkové bichle, která pro rodiče shromáždila na dvě stě tipů, jak svačit lépe. „Když jim dáme svačinu, která je vyvážená, která jim drží hladinu energie po celé dopoledne, tak jim prospějeme daleko víc,“ zamýšlí se Pavlína Mähringová dilematem zodpovědnosti a potěšení. Jakým způsobem rozšiřuje jídelníček u svých dětí? A co může pomoci dospělým, kteří svačiny odbývají?

Future first-round NFL draft pick, Inky Johnson's life changed forever with a single tackle at the University of Tennessee. A ruptured artery left his right arm paralyzed, almost taking his life, and Inky shares the challenges he faced to even get to the University of Tennessee, as well as his story coming back from the life-altering injury. You will be inspired as he shares about his faith and determination, the importance of character, and his own experiences as a sports dad.

In the age of AI, it's time to double down on being a human. That means things like bringing more hand-influenced spontaneity into, and embracing analogue processes in, your art. In this episode I share how I'm doing this in my own practice and how it's bringing me more joy and even creating new opportunities for me. By listening to this episode, you'll learn how  to embrace your own humanity to re-spark your joy and feel more connected in your everyday practice as an illustrator.Ideas in This Episode:Some differences between physical and digital mediaHow to embrace your humanity in the age of AIHow "The Minimum Vision of Success" can invite you into making artThe "Unplugged Album" of IllustrationRaw, Unplugged vs. Layered, ProducedThe importance of drawing regulalryShow LinksPlease use my Affiliate Links to support the podcast!Inky Illustrations: Combining Analogue and Digital Media (Skillshare Class) - https://www.tomfroese.com/teaching/inky-illustrationsInky Maps: Illustrate an Analogue Inspired Map on Your iPad (Skillshare Class) - https://www.tomfroese.com/teaching/inkymapsforprocreateMy main instagram - http://Instagram.com/mrtomfroeseMy daily drawing IG - http://instagram.com/drawingisimportantHow to Support This PodcastIf you love Thoughts on Illustration, help us to keep going in one of these easy ways:Tell your friends by sharing this episode or a link to the podcast on social mediaLike, Subscribe, and Leave a Comment (YouTube and on the Spotify App)Become an $8 Drawing Buddy on Patreon! Visit http://patreon.com/tomfroese to learn more.Join the Conversation: I'd love to hear your thoughts on this episode! Have you ever experienced a style crisis? How did you overcome it? Share your experiences in the comments or reach out to me on Instagram or by email at hello@tomfroese.comDon't Forget: If you enjoyed this episode, please like, subscribe and leave a comment or review! Your support helps others discover the podcast. PODCAST TEAM/CREDITS Mark Allan Falk, Audio/Video Engineerhttps://linktr.ee/semiathleticAll Music, including Theme Song and Cues by Mark Allan Falk. FIND ME ELSEWHERE YouTube - http://www.youtube.com/tomfroeseInstagram - http://www.instagram.com/mrtomfroeseWork/Classes/Teaching - http://wwwtomfroese.com

In this episode, Ros and Laura sit down with Anonymous Creator Inky Meditations, an artist who has captivated audiences on both TikTok and Instagram with mesmerizing, mindful ink paintings.  What began as a creative challenge has transformed into a social media sensation, with 104K followers on Instagram and an impressive 715K on TikTok. Inky Meditations' tutorial-style videos have become a source of inspiration for aspiring artists worldwide, showcasing the calming and meditative process of creating art with ink and water. In this conversation, Inky shares the story behind their social media success, detailing how the combination of Instagram and TikTok allowed them to reach a massive audience. Despite the growing online presence, the motivation behind Inky's art has always been rooted in personal fulfillment - rather than monetary gain. We dive into the markers of success for Inky Meditations, where meaningful engagement and the impact on viewers matter more than financial rewards. Beyond the anonymous Inky Meditations account, Inky has had a diverse career, participating in various art projects and ventures under their “regular” artist name. The episode explores the duality of being both a well-known anonymous creator and a multifaceted artist with a broad range of experiences. Inky also opens up about an exciting new chapter—their journey into authorship. Thanks to their online success, Inky was presented with the opportunity to write a book. We discuss the creative process behind this venture, the challenges, and what it's like to translate the meditative world of ink painting into a physical book. Join us as we explore the fascinating world of social media, creativity, and how an anonymous artist can make a meaningful impact through mindful art.   We hope that you enjoy this episode! Please send us a DM on Instagram to tell us how you found this episode and let us know if you have any ideas for future topics for the show.   PODCAST LINKS: INKY on Instgram: https://www.instagram.com/inky_meditations/ INKY on Tik Tok: https://www.tiktok.com/@inky_meditations Inky's Website: https://inkymeditations.com/ PROMO'S: Laura's Art Retreat in Vietnam 2025: https://laurajaneday.com/retreat Don't forget your special Podcast discount code — PRR200 (only 1 ticket left!)   AND    Join Ros for her 'Next Level Artist' FREE 3-day Live Training - Starting November 5th go to @rosgervayart to find out more!   FIND US AND FOLLOW US ONLINE! Follow Laura on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/laurajaneday/ Follow Ros on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/rosgervayart And to book a creative business coaching session with Laura please visit: https://coaching.laurajaneday.com/ To explore Ros' business coaching offers visit https://www.permissiontopaint.co   Help us grow our Podcast by leaving us 5 stars on Spotify or a review on Apple Podcasts. Here is how!

Tonight, we hear chilling tales of a glimmerman who gets aggressive, ghostly children in the woods, strange menacing inky black masses, and much more. Keep it spooky and enjoy!   Season 18 Episode 5 of Monsters Among Us Podcast, true paranormal stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and more, told by the witnesses themselves. SHOW NOTES: Support the show! Get ad-free, extended & bonus episodes (and more) on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/monstersamonguspodcast Tonight's Sponsor - Better Help - Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/monstersamongus and get on your way to being your best self. Get 10% off your first month with code MONSTERSAMONGUS Tonight's Sponsor - VIIA - Try VIIA hemp gummies! https://bit.ly/viiamonsters and use code MONSTERS New Black Eyed Kids MAU Halloween T-Shirts - https://monstersamonguspodcast.com/shop/bekhalloween RENT or BUY Shadows in the Desert: High Strangeness in the Borrego Triangle - https://www.borregotriangle.com/ Monsters Among Us Junior on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/monsters-among-us-junior/id1764989478 Monsters Among Us Junior on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1bh5mWa4lDSqeMMX1mYxDZ?si=9ec6f4f74d61498b Boulder Store - https://www.boulderwystore.com/about Boulder Store History - https://www.sublette.com/examiner/v7n40/v7n40s2.htm Young Harold Faler - https://bit.ly/4haxyXW Old Harold Faler - https://bit.ly/48cOpFK Donna and Pete Steele - https://bit.ly/3Y14auo KC NCS - https://kcnsc.doe.gov/technologies/research/ Kansas Glimmerman Sighting - https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2022/09/possible-glimmer-man-causes-traffic.html Black Blob Stories -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_GT8Xt8Y8E More Black Blob Stories - https://www.reddit.com/r/ParanormalEncounters/comments/1dapkhf/a_black_blob/ Even More Black Blob Stories - https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/uq1zlp/the_big_black_blob/ Music from tonight's episode: Music by Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse - https://www.youtube.com/c/IronCthulhuApocalypse CO.AG Music - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcavSftXHgxLBWwLDm_bNvA Music by White Bat Audio - https://www.youtube.com/@WhiteBatAudio White Bat Audio Songs: Alien Ruins Monolith Heart of Darkness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Tonight, we hear chilling tales of a glimmerman who gets aggressive, ghostly children in the woods, strange menacing inky black masses, and much more. Keep it spooky and enjoy!   Season 18 Episode 5 of Monsters Among Us Podcast, true paranormal stories of ghosts, cryptids, UFOs and more, told by the witnesses themselves. SHOW NOTES: Support the show! Get ad-free, extended & bonus episodes (and more) on Patreon - https://www.patreon.com/monstersamonguspodcast Tonight's Sponsor - Better Help - Give online therapy a try at betterhelp.com/monstersamongus and get on your way to being your best self. Get 10% off your first month with code MONSTERSAMONGUS Tonight's Sponsor - VIIA - Try VIIA hemp gummies! https://bit.ly/viiamonsters and use code MONSTERS New Black Eyed Kids MAU Halloween T-Shirts - https://monstersamonguspodcast.com/shop/bekhalloween RENT or BUY Shadows in the Desert: High Strangeness in the Borrego Triangle - https://www.borregotriangle.com/ Monsters Among Us Junior on Apple Podcasts - https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/monsters-among-us-junior/id1764989478 Monsters Among Us Junior on Spotify - https://open.spotify.com/show/1bh5mWa4lDSqeMMX1mYxDZ?si=9ec6f4f74d61498b Boulder Store - https://www.boulderwystore.com/about Boulder Store History - https://www.sublette.com/examiner/v7n40/v7n40s2.htm Young Harold Faler - https://bit.ly/4haxyXW Old Harold Faler - https://bit.ly/48cOpFK Donna and Pete Steele - https://bit.ly/3Y14auo KC NCS - https://kcnsc.doe.gov/technologies/research/ Kansas Glimmerman Sighting - https://www.phantomsandmonsters.com/2022/09/possible-glimmer-man-causes-traffic.html Black Blob Stories -  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_GT8Xt8Y8E More Black Blob Stories - https://www.reddit.com/r/ParanormalEncounters/comments/1dapkhf/a_black_blob/ Even More Black Blob Stories - https://www.reddit.com/r/Paranormal/comments/uq1zlp/the_big_black_blob/ Music from tonight's episode: Music by Iron Cthulhu Apocalypse - https://www.youtube.com/c/IronCthulhuApocalypse CO.AG Music - https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCcavSftXHgxLBWwLDm_bNvA Music by White Bat Audio - https://www.youtube.com/@WhiteBatAudio White Bat Audio Songs: Alien Ruins Monolith Heart of Darkness Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Fall is here, and so are fall-ish cereals! We'll start with the new, limited edition Special K Caramel! Then, an Itallian Extra from Kellogg's, and Mesa Sunrise from Nature's Path. Plus -- we're heading into the Cereal Graveyard with Inky, Blinky, Pinky & Clyde!Become a supporter of this podcast: https://www.spreaker.com/podcast/cereal-killers--4294848/support.

Guests Gaz Williams - performer, music technologist Richard Nicol founder and product designer Pittsburgh Modular   Youtube video verion: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nfFIC9nJVX8 For preshow and Ad free version and much more: Patreon.com/sonicstate   IZotope RX11 is the industry trailblazer for audio repair and enhancement. Powered by machine learning technology, RX's comprehensive suite of tools tackles everything from common audio problems to the trickiest of sonic rescues, for music, audio post production, and content creation. Save an extra 10% on any software purchase with the code SONIC10 at checkout. at izotope.com/sonictalk  Save 50% -Kontakt is your gateway to an unmatched trove of virtual instruments. More than a sampler, Kontakt has powered two decades of blockbuster film scores and chart-topping hits, plus thousands of incredible instruments. Kontakt is the industry's leading instrument-building tool. And exclusively for listeners of Sonic TALK, take 10% off your software purchase at Native-Instruments.com with the  code SONIC10. Some restrictions apply. 00:00:16 SHOW START 00:01:52 AD: SonicState Patreon 00:03:20 Inky Da Cat 00:10:37 Coming UP 00:12:00 Gaz and Steve Davis Live at Brecon Cathedral 00:21:06 AD: iZotope RX 11 00:22:21 Preparation 2 Physical Model 00:30:19 Dancing Vibes 00:36:59 MPC 3.0 beta Where to Watch/Listen - We now stream the live show to Youtube Live, Twitch,  Facebook Live as well as at  Sonicstate.com/live every Weds at 4pm UK time- please do join in. Preshow available on Twitch. You can also download the audio version from RSS FEED 

SERENDIPITY - https://www.inkyjohnson.comSerendipity is a captivating show that explores the magic of unexpected moments and connections in our lives. Hosted by Inky and Oak , each episode delves into serendipitous encounters, chance events, and the surprising twists of fate that shape our journeys. With a mix of personal anecdotes, and thought-provoking narratives, Serendipity invites listeners to reflect on the role of chance in their own lives and appreciate the beauty of the unplanned. INKY JOHNSONHusband, father, collegiate, athlete, entrepreneur, and author, Inky Johnson is one of the most highly sought after speakers in the world. For over a decade, executives, professional, sports teams, business owners, and people all over, have benefited from the rock, energy office, thought-provoking, and inspirational presentations. Whether the topic is leadership, teamwork, excel in the miss of adversity, embrace and change, mental agility, or perseverance, Inky's message is effective and efficient. Inky's gift of being an effective communicator has allowed him to cross over into different industries. He is a leader called upon by leaders. A partial list of his clients include Chick-fil-A, Dell Technologies, AFLAC insurance, Bank of America, Stryker, Pinnacle Financial, Comcast. DeMarco “Oak” MitchellDeMarco Mitchell is an experience, educational, professional and transformational leader,  who invest in the development and success of students and faculty through professional development and academic rigor to achieve school excellence.THE PROCESS: TRUST IT. RESPECT IT. EMBRACE IT.

SERENDIPITY - https://www.inkyjohnson.comSerendipity is a captivating show that explores the magic of unexpected moments and connections in our lives. Hosted by Inky and Oak , each episode delves into serendipitous encounters, chance events, and the surprising twists of fate that shape our journeys. With a mix of personal anecdotes, and thought-provoking narratives, Serendipity invites listeners to reflect on the role of chance in their own lives and appreciate the beauty of the unplanned. INKY JOHNSONHusband, father, collegiate, athlete, entrepreneur, and author, Inky Johnson is one of the most highly sought after speakers in the world. For over a decade, executives, professional, sports teams, business owners, and people all over, have benefited from the rock, energy office, thought-provoking, and inspirational presentations. Whether the topic is leadership, teamwork, excel in the miss of adversity, embrace and change, mental agility, or perseverance, Inky's message is effective and efficient. Inky's gift of being an effective communicator has allowed him to cross over into different industries. He is a leader called upon by leaders. A partial list of his clients include Chick-fil-A, Dell Technologies, AFLAC insurance, Bank of America, Stryker, Pinnacle Financial, Comcast. DeMarco “Oak” MitchellDeMarco Mitchell is an experience, educational, professional and transformational leader,  who invest in the development and success of students and faculty through professional development and academic rigor to achieve school excellence.THE PROCESS: TRUST IT. RESPECT IT. EMBRACE IT.

SERENDIPITY - https://www.inkyjohnson.comSerendipity is a captivating show that explores the magic of unexpected moments and connections in our lives. Hosted by Inky and Oak , each episode delves into serendipitous encounters, chance events, and the surprising twists of fate that shape our journeys. With a mix of personal anecdotes, and thought-provoking narratives, Serendipity invites listeners to reflect on the role of chance in their own lives and appreciate the beauty of the unplanned. INKY JOHNSONHusband, father, collegiate, athlete, entrepreneur, and author, Inky Johnson is one of the most highly sought after speakers in the world. For over a decade, executives, professional, sports teams, business owners, and people all over, have benefited from the rock, energy office, thought-provoking, and inspirational presentations. Whether the topic is leadership, teamwork, excel in the miss of adversity, embrace and change, mental agility, or perseverance, Inky's message is effective and efficient. Inky's gift of being an effective communicator has allowed him to cross over into different industries. He is a leader called upon by leaders. A partial list of his clients include Chick-fil-A, Dell Technologies, AFLAC insurance, Bank of America, Stryker, Pinnacle Financial, Comcast. DeMarco “Oak” MitchellDeMarco Mitchell is an experience, educational, professional and transformational leader,  who invest in the development and success of students and faculty through professional development and academic rigor to achieve school excellence.THE PROCESS: TRUST IT. RESPECT IT. EMBRACE IT.

SERENDIPITY - https://www.inkyjohnson.comSerendipity is a captivating show that explores the magic of unexpected moments and connections in our lives. Hosted by Inky and Oak , each episode delves into serendipitous encounters, chance events, and the surprising twists of fate that shape our journeys. With a mix of personal anecdotes, and thought-provoking narratives, Serendipity invites listeners to reflect on the role of chance in their own lives and appreciate the beauty of the unplanned. INKY JOHNSONHusband, father, collegiate, athlete, entrepreneur, and author, Inky Johnson is one of the most highly sought after speakers in the world. For over a decade, executives, professional, sports teams, business owners, and people all over, have benefited from the rock, energy office, thought-provoking, and inspirational presentations. Whether the topic is leadership, teamwork, excel in the miss of adversity, embrace and change, mental agility, or perseverance, Inky's message is effective and efficient. Inky's gift of being an effective communicator has allowed him to cross over into different industries. He is a leader called upon by leaders. A partial list of his clients include Chick-fil-A, Dell Technologies, AFLAC insurance, Bank of America, Stryker, Pinnacle Financial, Comcast. DeMarco “Oak” MitchellDeMarco Mitchell is an experience, educational, professional and transformational leader,  who invest in the development and success of students and faculty through professional development and academic rigor to achieve school excellence.THE PROCESS: TRUST IT. RESPECT IT. EMBRACE IT.

Resilience, courage, and unwavering determination are the 3 words I'd use to describe today's interview with my friend Inky Johnson. Inky was on the brink of realizing his lifelong dream of playing professional football when a catastrophic injury during a game for the University of Tennessee changed his life forever. In a fleeting moment, his promising athletic career was halted, leaving his right arm and hand permanently paralyzed. Yet, what Inky chose to do in the aftermath of this life-altering event is nothing short of remarkable. Instead of succumbing to despair, Inky transformed his greatest setback into his biggest breakthrough. Today, he's not only an acclaimed author and entrepreneur but also one of the most compelling motivational speakers, touching the lives of people across the globe, from elite athletes to top executives. Inky's narrative is a powerful reminder that our greatest trials often pave the way for our most significant triumphs. In this episode, you'll learn about: Inky's journey through the shock and realization of his injury and how he found the strength to face his new reality. The pivotal role of patience, faith, and an unwavering belief Insights into leveraging adversity as a catalyst for uncovering and utilizing other gifts and talents. The importance of unconditional effort Lessons on leadership The critical distinction between expectations and standards The indispensable value of joy and happiness These insights offer not just hope but practical strategies for anyone facing obstacles, big or small and will leave you with lots of things to think about as you fight through battles in your own life. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices