A Lady called Fire

Instinctively, I stopped the video. I did not want to intrude on Nina's privacy. It was obvious that Felicity was now intent on destroying our relationship and I wasn't going to let that happen.

A little later, whilst we were eating, I asked Nina a question.

"Can I ask a personal question? It's important."

"Ok?"

"Did Felicity video you and her making out?"

Not that I know of. But why do you ask?"

"Because a USB arrived today in an envelope addressed to me. It showed you and Felicity."

"What!!!"

"Don't worry I didn't watch it after I realised what it was."

"The bitch!" said Nina. "What a fucking bitch.! She must have filmed us secretly. Shit! What if she posts it on the internet?"

"Don't worry, She won't. I'll speak to her later."

***

An hour later I phoned Felicity. I put the phone on speaker so that Nina could listen in. Felicity answered on the third ring.

"Hello."

"Hello, Felicity. This is James. I got your video."

"Did you enjoy it?"

"I didn't watch it. Why did you send it?"

"To let you know she's a lesbian."

"Actually, she's bisexual. No Felicity, I think you wanted to break up our relationship. And you can never do that. I Love Nina."

"You hardly know her. She's mine and I want her back."

"She knows you well enough and she doesn't want you."

Just then, Nina started to talk.

"Felicity, it's over. I am not coming back. Move on and try not to be such a bitch. Filming me secretly was a low trick."

There was silence at the other end of the phone line, and I took my opportunity.

"One last thing. Sending me a copy of that video was an invasion of Nina's privacy. I don't know if it was illegal but don't consider posting it on the internet because that is, and It would virtually guarantee a jail sentence. Let's face it, there is so much lesbian porn out there that it's highly unlikely anybody who knows Nina will ever see or recognise her, and posting would be pointless.

I don't think there's anything left to say. Goodnight."

And I put the phone down.

I turned to Nina who was looking at me with a broad smile. Her mood had rapidly switched from anger to happiness during the course of the short phone conversation.

I was still annoyed.

"To think I wanted to fuck her," I said.

Nina didn't respond to my remark. Her focus was elsewhere.

"Did you hear what you said? You told her you loved me. Did you mean it?"

"James, Do you love me?"

I looked her in the eye.

"Yes, Ninapaqari, I love you, I replied. With all my heart."

Nina kissed me on the lips.

"I've never said this to anybody in any language but now I'll say it in four."

"Te amo.

Eu te amo.

Kuyayki.

I love you.

I Love you so much. Enough to forgive you for wanting to fuck Felicity before you met me. After all, I

did fuck Felicity before I met you. You've got the proof of that on that video she sent you. I'd rather

we didn't watch it though. I want to forget her.

Please turn the oven off. I need you far more than I need supper. Take me to bed now."

***

That evening. she first made me sit and watch, as naked, legs splayed wide, knees bent. and with a dildo deep inside her she applied a wand vibrator to her clitoris. I sat and watched, my dick hard in my hand as I watched her.

Within minutes she took her first orgasm, her thighs trembling, her toes curling, and her mouth open in a long drawn-out sigh. After that, she just kept coming and I lost count of how many times she climaxed before she shuddered for one last time and lay still.

She rolled over onto her front and lay on the bed before kneeling on all fours exposing her swollen sex, the slit glistening with her juices, to full view. Her body was already slick with sweat when I slid inside her tight tunnel, and she reached down and started to finger her clit.

"Hard," she said.

"Fuck me hard and fast."

And so I did, plunging my penis balls deep on every stroke as she screamed in ecstasy until finally I could wait no longer and groaning loudly came inside of her.

***

Lima, Peru

Just over a year later, early in the morning, and after an overnight flight from London via Madrid we arrived at Jorge Chavez Airport outside of Lima. We were met at the airport by a transfer service who took us to the Sheraton Hotel close to the town centre.

After we booked in, Nina was too excited to sleep. She had not been home for over two years and was in a hurry to "just walk in the streets." They were starting to get busy as people went to work and not far from the hotel we found a small café where Nina ordered us both a pejerrey sandwich with onion and avocado washed down with a cup of hot coffee.

"Real food," she said.

Nina was impatient to travel to Cuzco but also concerned that I might suffer altitude sickness after arriving there, eleven thousand two hundred feet high in the mountains. So, we had decided to try and arrive as rested and un-jetlagged as possible and planned to stay two nights in Lima before flying to Cuzco, three hundred and fifty miles inland. We would need to avoid alcohol for the time being. rest for the first twenty-four hours after arriving in Cuzco, and I planned to take acetazolamide tablets to combat the risk of illness.

We had two days in Lima and Nina was determined to show me as much as possible. The Plaza de Armas was a twenty-minute walk away and there we entered the Cathedral of Lima where Nina prayed quietly. She later told me, that amongst other things, she was praying I wouldn't suffer from altitude sickness.

Later, we visited the Convento de San Francisco. The church and monastery are probably most famous for their catacombs containing the bones of twenty-five thousand people. We walked in the beautiful gardens, and I was particularly interested in the large mural on the wall of the dining room which depicted the Last Supper with a difference; Jesus and the Apostles sit with women and children, around a round table and eat guinea pig, whilst the Devil stands behind Judas.

Nina laughed when I raised my eyebrows and told me guinea pig was a Peruvian delicacy and she had eaten it on many occasions.

"My mother may prepare it for you.... Just joking. We Peruvians know that lots of foreigners are put off by the idea."

"I've eaten crocodile, rabbit, and snake, so I'd try guinea pig but there's no need to serve it just for me."

Later in the afternoon, it took us forty minutes by taxi to drive to Parque Kennedy in Miraflores. This small neighbourhood park is home to a population of cats who are cared for by a group of local volunteers who feed them daily. Nina said she wanted to show them to me, but I believe her real motive was to sample the street food on offer. She introduced me in turn to Butifarra, Churro, and Picarones.

"No Guinea pig in any of this and one hundred percent safe, she said. The street sellers in the park are all licensed."

We sat on a bench to eat our Butifarra and I was immediately befriended by a large ginger cat demanding to share some Peruvian ham. He was only one of what seemed to be hundreds of friendly felines variously resting, walking about, or hassling tourists for a share of their sandwiches.

We spent several hours in the park and the surrounding shops. I was able to buy a colourful painting of three women in traditional dress from a local artist, and we listened to the street musicians and ambled around the park.

Then, half an hour before sunset we walked to the nearby Parque del Amor (Park of Love) and watched the sunset over the Pacific Ocean. As the light faded Nina turned to me,

"Thank you for coming home with me, tú eres mi vida..... you are my life."

***

It was after nine o'clock when we reached our hotel, and we were both exhausted from our long flight and busy day. We showered and went to bed and when I woke at half past six the following morning the sun was about to rise.

We had an early and leisurely breakfast in the hotel before setting off on a second day of sightseeing.

The highlight of the day was the Museo Largo with its huge collection of pre-Columbian art dating back five thousand years.

Part of the collection was some Moche pottery artifacts that were highly sexual in nature. They depicted figures of men and women in all manner of sexual positions, anal sex, masturbation, threesomes, and even a kneeling female figure giving a male figure a blow job.

In a shop, not far from the museum, we found a shop selling replicas of the pottery and Nina was keen to buy two vessels, one depicting doggy-style sex and the other the kneeling fellatio. The shopkeeper wanted six hundred sol or around two hundred US dollars each, but eventually, Nina was able to haggle him down to four hundred sol for both.

In the street, Nina told me she had to have them.

"My two favourites On a fifteen hundred-year-old pot. Who would believe it?"

That evening, back in the hotel, Nina carefully packed them in bubble wrap but not before she put them on the writing table opposite the bed, showered, and flaunted her naked body in front of me.

"We're not going to be able to fuck for a week after tonight."

She knelt on all four on the bed. There was no foreplay. She didn't need it, and I fucked her animalistically, hard and fast. That night, she was very vocal and screamed each time she came.

Then, in a parody of the figures on the table, I stood, and she knelt in front of me and took my penis in her mouth. Head bobbing she slowly and skilfully sucked me to climax and swallowed my milk.

"Welcome to Peru," she said smiling up at me.

Cuzco, Peru

We arrived in Cuzco early the following morning and Nina's parents met us at the airport. Her father was a tall, dark-haired, and distinguished-looking man in his late forties or early fifties whilst her mother was short and stocky and a little younger. I think I half expected her to wear typical Peruvian dress, but she was dressed in a smart skirt blouse, and jacket. I shouldn't have been surprised since Nina had told me she was an accountant at the university where her father was a lecturer in archaeology.

After the initial hugs and kisses. I was introduced and we set off to their home on the outskirts of the City.

Her parents were adamant that we should both rest. I was soon aware that the air was thinner than In Lima and found myself breathing faster and deeper, even whilst sitting still. Resting didn't mean a lack of visitors and, all day and into the evening, a stream of friends and relatives; aunts, uncles, nephews, and nieces, came to visit and say welcome.

At first, Nina tried to translate but it soon became impossible, Nearly everybody spoke Quechua and Spanish. Nina spoke to her mother in Quechua, and to her father in Portuguese, and if she was speaking to both of them she spoke Spanish. A few people including her father spoke English and he sat and politely conversed with me whilst I drank bittersweet coca tea given to me to help prevent altitude sickness. Eventually, I sat quietly and listened to the excited throng as they welcomed Nina, albeit fleetingly, back into the fold.

Finally, on the third day, I was acclimatised enough to visit the Inca citadel of Sacsayhuaman in the north of Cuzco. We spent a half day with Nina's father, Senor Ruiz, as a guide. The following day he took us to Machu Picchu by train and I was able to tick one item off my bucket list.

The following evening we borrowed the family car and drove North out of Cuzco. Then, Just after midnight Nina and I sat twenty miles outside the city and looked up at the heavens. It was a dark moonless night, and the stars were shining bright. It was easy to understand how the Incas thought this place to be the centre of the universe.

I felt so small and insignificant as I sat next to the beautiful woman who had become the centre of my own tiny universe.

Looking west the Milky Way stretched out in front of us. It was a bright glowing band of light. Jupiter was low in the west in Libra, the star Antares above and slightly to the right in Scorpio, Saturn higher in Sagittarius, and Mars higher still in Capricornus. I pointed these out in turn to Nina.

"The Incas had very different names for the stars," she said. "They described the night sky differently. Maybe here in the Andes, we should use their descriptions. They talked about the Llama, the Serpent, the Toad, and the Partridge. Do you see those two bright stars"....and she pointed southwest.

"Yes," I replied. "Alpha and Beta Centauri in the constellation Centaurus. They point to the Southern Cross."

"You are such a smart arse. The Incas believed they were the eyes of the Llama. They do point to the Southern Cross which they called Chakana, so there is something they had in common with you."

And then we sat in companionable silence alone with our thoughts. And I thought about what Nina and I had in common and then our differences. Nina had been so very happy since arriving home in Peru close to her family and the culture in which she had grown up. She had not yet talked about returning to South America to live. I thought she soon would.

I resolved to start learning Spanish.... and then I turned, took her hands in mine, breathed deep, and asked her to marry me. and....... In the darkness, I heard her sob with happiness....just before she said yes.

***

Endnotes

William Herschel (1738-1822) was born in Hanover, Germany but moved to England when he was nineteen. He was both a musician and an astronomer and often collaborated with his sister Caroline who was also an astronomer. They lived together in New King Street in Bath between 1777 and 1782. In 1781 using a six-inch telescope he had made himself and mounted in his back garden in Bath, he discovered the planet Uranus. He was a skilled telescope maker and built a 40-foot telescope which was the largest in the world for half a century. Amongst his many achievements, He discovered infrared radiation, two moons of Uranus (Titania and Oberon), and two moons of Saturn (Enceladus and Mimas). In 1820 he was elected the first president of the Royal Society of Astronomy.

***

William Congreve (1670-1729) was an English playwright who wrote the lines, "Heav'n has no rage, like love to hatred turn'd, Nor hell a fury, like a woman scorned", in his play The Mourning Bride. This is often paraphrased as "Hell hath no fury like a woman scorned" and wrongly attributed to Willian Shakespeare.

***

Quechua is the language spoken by the Incas and is still spoken in the central Andes. by over eight million people who speak it as their first language. In Peru, an estimated four million people (12% of the population) are fluent with ten million (30%) understanding some Quechua. Around Cuzco nearly fifty percent of the population speaks it and almost all of them also speak Spanish. Quechua, with Spanish and Aymara, is an official language of both Peru and Bolivia. Quechua words that have entered English through Spanish include llama, vicuna, alpaca, condor, puma, guano, and Inca.

***

The Moche culture dates to between 100 and 800 AD and was situated in coastal northern Peru with its capital city near present-day Moche. They are renowned for their pottery and were skilled metalworkers producing high-quality jewellery. They were highly proficient in agriculture engineering and used complex irrigation systems to divert meltwater from the Andes into the arid desert region in which they lived. They built several ceremonial structures in the form of pyramids called Huacas.

It is believed that human sacrifice played a major part in their religious ceremonies.

***

At its height, the Inca empire extended from modern-day Quito in the north to Santiago in the south and extended several hundred miles inland from the Pacific coast. It was established around 1200 AD and was conquered by the Spanish in 1533. Even though they never discovered the wheel, use draft animals, had no access to iron, and had no written language they were master builders with an extensive road and irrigation system. The capital of the empire was Cuzco. The emperor ruled by divine right and was believed to be the son of the sun.

***

Astronomy played an important part in Incan life. The Incas are one of a small group of cultures to describe both light and dark constellations. The light constellations were formed by the patterns of the stars visible in the night sky and were of animals, gods, heroes, and other objects and were considered inanimate. The star cluster of the Pleiades (the Seven Sisters) was of particular significance to the Incas and was called Qullqa or "storehouse. This was because in the southern hemisphere, it disappears for a period between April and June and its reappearance was associated with the harvest, a time of plenty. For the Incas, the Pleiades was a sacred site to which sacrifices were offered.

The Incas believed the milky way was a river and they identified animals within the dark patches where there was no light. They believed that these were living animals who lived in the river. Among these were the Serpent Toad, Llama, Fox, and Condor.

***

Inca cosmology and their religion and culture were dependent upon their being able to see the stars and the Milky Way clearly, A study published in 2016 reported that, because of light pollution, 60% of Europeans, and almost 80% of Americans had never seen the Milky Way at all. Over one-third of the population of Earth can now no longer see the Milky Way.