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Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 01

By: Wonderstorm



A primal scream echoed through the jungle.

Dani D'Annunzio was weak in the knees. Even with everything she'd been put through over the previous twenty-four hours, this was too much. Her stomach was churning, and had it not been for the support of Gabriel Benitez Serrano, she might have collapsed there, in the dirt. Only now, as the yips and whines dissipated into the Bolivian night, did Dani truly understand what was being asked of her, what these people expected her to do. 

It made her sick. 

She turned, disgusted by the scene that had unfolded before her, disgusted in herself, and pushed her way through the crowd of gathered Huaca. Benitez was behind her, calling to her, telling her to slow down. But Dani simply needed to get away. She found open space beyond the far edge of the clustered little huts, but stumbled over her own feet and fell to her knees. Tears streaming down her face, she threw up the rice, the fish, the fresh fruit, and the fermented carambola juice she'd feasted on earlier in the night. 

Naked, save for a lacy pair of red panties and a ridiculous set of ankle-laced espadrilles, Dani held herself up on all fours, her breasts exposed and dangling beneath her torso. Benitez came up from behind her, crouched down, and without thinking, touched her naked back to see if she was okay. "Do you want some water?" he asked.

Dani shook her head. She didn't want anything from him. She didn't want anything from any of them. She just wanted to be far, far away from here. 

A necklace of alternating jaguar teeth and silver beads hung around her neck. Her hair had been done up to perfection by one of the girls in town, laced with strands of sapumpa fern from the jungle. Even in her present state, wiping that night's dinner from her lips and weeping all the while, Dani was a sight to behold. Dark, Mediterranean skin, deep brown eyes, full lips, and an even fuller chest, the girl was accustomed to being the center of attention, the object of desire for men in Bolivia, Honduras, or back in rural Vermont. She was twenty-four years old and blessed with the sort of figure that might've landed her on pages of a lingerie catalog -- thin, five-foot-ten, and completely toned. She was a vision. 

No one but Benitez was paying her any attention, however. Not Tutakuru. Not Taksa Kuchu. Not Uturunku or Qaray Puka. They were fixated on the river here in the little village of Aya Pampa, the entire population gathered to watch the flesh sacrifice to the goddess Sipusiki. 

In the distance, Dani could still hear Summer Monroe screaming out in sexual pleasure over the chanting crowd. Her cries were increasing in intensity, and it was clear to everyone present that she was about to crest. 

"I can't," Dani cried to Benitez, staring blankly ahead. "I can't. I can't do this." 

"Ssshhh," Benitez soothed her. "That's okay. I understand. She'll understand, too."

Dani sobbed loudly. "I just can't..."

Summer screamed behind her one last time, and the crowd erupted in cheers and jubilation. She had reached her climax. She had cum. And the village of Aya Pampa had pleased Sipusiki once more. 

***

Dani had been on the big yellow school bus from Rurrenabaque for the better part of the past two days. A trip that might have taken about eight hours during the dry season had cost Dani thirty-nine to that point. They'd back-tracked more times than she could remember after repeatedly finding parts of the so-called highway washed out. She'd slept on the bus the night before as they waited for the sunrise in order to clear away fallen branches blocking their way. And they'd enlisted the help of a local campesino and his tractor after getting trapped in a mud puddle four-feet-deep earlier that afternoon. 

The bus was half-empty already, and Dani felt real heartache for her fellow passengers who were continuing on to Riberalta or Guayaramerin. Travel in the yungas this time of a year was not for the impatient, and riding on a badly aged American school bus with most of the padding stripped from the seats was not exactly an easy ride in even the best of times. The shocks were gone, the engine was less than reliable, and glass was missing from half of the windows, making the not-infrequent rainstorms an absolute pleasure. 

But Dani was here, at last. San Eduardo. Capital of the Valle de los Reyes. Jumping-off point for destinations further down the Rio San Clemente and the Rio de los Reyes both. Trading post for Benianos, rural campesinos, and Huaca Indians alike. San Eduardo was no sprawling metropolis, but it was the biggest little town that Dani had seen since leaving Rurrenabaque the previous morning. There looked to be a handful of small storefronts, a run-down old Catholic church, and a handful other non-descript buildings erected out of cinderblocks and corrugated tin. And, at the far end of "town," recessed into the jungle, was the Oveja Negra. 

Dani gathered her backpack, and began bidding goodbye to the people she'd gotten to know over the past two days. The brothers Koque and Juan. Señora Orteguilla and her two little girls. The bus driver, Arturo, who still had a long, long journey ahead of him. None of them were getting off with her in San Eduardo. And none of them had expressed anything more than a passing disinterest in the work she had come to do with the Indians living here in the Oriente. 

From how Dani understood it, this wasn't an uncommon reaction when it came to the Huaca. Even at the height of their power, the Inca had been more or less content to call the Andes home and leave the lowland tribes to the East to themselves. The Spanish and Portuguese had carved South America into colonies and countries, but the Huaca continued to cross back and forth between Bolivia and Brazil for generations with little heed to the borders imposed upon them. They sat out the War for Independence, the War of the Pacific, and the numerous little cocaine wars that enveloped the rest of the country. Overlooked and undisturbed, the Huaca continued to carry on in the very same fashion as their ancestors had, slipping through the cracks of history. 

And yet, these were a people who'd almost been wiped out -- not by any sort of external factor, but because of they had suffered from a low birthrate for almost a full decade. The cause was still a bit of a mystery to Dani, but from how she understood it, the work shouldered by the Huaca Public Health and Fertility Initiative -- "La Iniciativa" - had helped turned things around. After two years of leading a frustratingly ineffectual public health campaign of her own in Eastern Honduras, Dani was looking to finally make an impact, and it seemed as if Summer Monroe's non-profit might just allow her to have that opportunity. 

For twenty-six months, Daniella D'Annunzio had given talks and speeches throughout the Gracias a Dios department as a Peace Corps volunteer in Honduras, doing her best to help improve the lives of the Kwirku people living in the pine savannahs. Filter your water. Wear shoes. Don't dump waste upstream from where you get your drinking water. Twenty-six months later, Dani was not really sure about what, exactly, she had accomplished. The Kwirku humored her while she was among them, but went back to their same ways the moment she turned her back. Disappointed, and more than a little jaded about wasting two years of her life, Dani wasn't ready to return to Vermont just yet; not without doing something, anything, to help those people less fortunate than she. 

A friend of a friend of a friend had heard about an opportunity opening up in Eastern Bolivia with the Huaca Public Health and Fertility Initiative. The head of La Iniciativa was a research professor at the Universidad de La Paz, an American biologist by the name of Summer Monroe. A Rhode Island native who'd moved down to Bolivia years earlier, Summer spent her autumns and winters on campus at the university, and her springs and summers in the Oriente traveling from one little Huaca village to the next. Summer and Dani wrote each other back and forth as Dani's Peace Corps service was coming to a close. And Summer offered the girl the chance to come down to South America, see the sort of fertility work she was doing with the Huaca, and maybe, possibly, help La Iniciativa cover more ground that coming spring. 

Arturo and the yellow school bus sputtered out of town, leaving black plumes of smoke in their wake. It was getting close to ten o'clock, and Dani wasn't sure how much further the driver intended to go, but he had apparently decided to keep on going while the roads were clear. Dani followed the smell of fumes down the street to the Oveja. 

Dani worried about being disheveled and underdressed as she walked into the little bar. She was wearing a heather-gray tank top, flip-flops, and a tight-fitting pair of jeans she'd first put on the previous morning. As she stepped in out of the night, she discovered that she shouldn't have worried -- the Oveja Negra wasn't exactly like one of clubs she'd attended while going to school in Manhattan. It was almost all men -- men drinking cervezas, men knocking back shots of liquor, men laughing and joking with one another. Most of them were dressed similarly to Dani herself -- jeans, open shirts, and even the occasional straw cowboy hat. There were a handful of girls scattered about, but none of them looked anything like Daniella, for whom heads turned as she entered the bar.

The fact that conversation quieted unnerved the girl a little. 

Confirming that none of the women currently present in the bar looked like a blonde American expatriate, she pushed ahead and saddled up to the bar. She made eye contact with one of the two bartenders -- a tall, overweight young man holding court in front of a handful of other men. "Estoy buscando a Summer Monroe," Dani explained. "I'm looking for Summer Monroe." 

The bartender nodded. But instead of replying to Dani, he glanced towards one of the men who were seated at the bar. And, if Summer stood out in San Eduardo like a sore thumb, so too did Gabriel Benitez Serrano. Cleaner than the rest of the Oveja Negra's patrons, Benitez also had a distinctly Western look that set him apart from the Indians, mestizos, and Afro-Bolivians that Dani had surrounded herself with since setting down in La Paz. Strong cheekbones, Caucasian features, and a thick head of curly hair that was somewhere between dirty-blonde and light brown. Perfect teeth, perfect smile, and a presence about him that suggested he wasn't just another campesino, Benitez looked to be in his late thirties, maybe even early forties. He stood and offered his hand to the girl. 

"Gabriel Benitez Serrano," he introduced. He continued in Spanish, "I'm a friend of Summer's. I work with her on La Iniciativa. We've been expecting you." 

Dani smiled and shook the man's hand. After two years in Honduras, she was fluent in Spanish. She had some proficiency with Kwirku, as well, but she was skeptical that anyone in the Oveja that night happened to be a Honduran national. "Daniella D'Annunzio."

"We were starting to get a little worried," Benitez continued. Reaching for her backpack, he instructed her, "Here, let's give this to Chuy." After she'd slid it off her shoulders and over the bar, Benitez gestured towards the closer of the two bartenders. "Daniella D'Annunzio, Jesus Zerbino. Jesus Zerbino, Daniella D'Annunzio." 

"Dani," the girl instructed them both as she shook the bartender's sweaty hand. 

"Chuy," the bartender offered in return. 

"His brother, Alberto," Benitez said, and then shouted, "Beto!" The other bartender waved at Dani, and she dutifully waved back. 

"So you touched down in La Paz, what, three days ago?" Benitez asked. 

Dani shook her head. "Four. I had to fly from Tegucigalpa to Costa Rica, and then from Costa Rica to La Paz. So I did Saturday night in La Paz, and then it was Route 3 to Yacuma and Route 2 up Rurrenabaque that next day. I did Sunday night there, and then Monday night on the bus out somewhere around El Triunfo." 

Benitez winced, and looked at his watch. "And it's only another two hours until Wednesday." Shaking his head, he glanced up at Chuy. "A drink for our world traveler here." 

A part of Dani just wanted to meet Summer, and then collapse into bed. But after the two-day bus ride from Rurrenabaque, the thought of a drink actually sounded pretty good. 

"A Paceña, please," Dani told the bartender, asking for the same local beer she'd had upon arrival in La Paz. 

"No, no, no," Benitez cried. He thought better of his objections, though, and shrugged. "Fine, fine. Get the girl a Paceña," he instructed the bartender. But, turning to Dani herself, Benitez told her, "This is Bolivia. And the Oriente. You need to start with chicha qullisara." 

"Alright, alright," Dani relented. Having no idea exactly what it was she was ordering, she nonetheless called out to Chuy, "Chicha qullisara, please." 

"And the Paceña," Benitez added, "to wash it down." 

As Chuy pulled a bottle from beneath the bar, Benitez apologized for the long journey to San Eduardo. "We're not exactly a well-funded organization. And even if we were, there aren't a lot of non-stops to the Valle de los Reyes." He ran his hand through his thick head of hair. "The closest real airstrip from here is probably down in La Santisima Trinidad. You're on the frontier now." 

Dani laughed politely. It had certainly taken her long enough to get here to confirm that fact. "And we still have a ways to go, right?" 

"We still have a ways to go," Benitez confirmed. "San Eduardo's more or less a stop-over point. There aren't a lot of roads that lead in and out of Huaca country. Let's get a little booze in you and send you to bed -- I think Summer's plan is get out of here crack of dawn tomorrow for Aya Pampa." 

"Sounds good," Dani replied, not even really sure of what she was supposed to be doing for La Iniciativa. Summer had been pretty vague on the day-to-day. 

Chuy placed a small tumbler of sour-smelling purple liquor down on the bar in front of Dani, and alongside it Dani's more recognizable Paceña. Dani reached for the liquor first, but Benitez grabbed it out from under her. "Nuh-uh," he scolded her. Tilting the glass just slightly, so that a drop fell to the floor, he toasted, "To Sipusiki. The Huaca earth goddess." 

"To Sipusiki," Dani repeated, and took the tumbler from the man. Without waiting a second longer, she knocked back the shot of liquor. Her throat burned, but it was a good burn. She couldn't place the taste -- not vodka, exactly, but similar. A different consistency. And a more powerful punch. 

As Dani washed back the chicha with her beer, Benitez talked. "I'm a doctor down in Trinidad. General practice. A real doctor, none of Dr. Monroe's frogs and lizards and such. People."

The girl understood. Summer had been an amphibian biologist in the States, and had continued down that path at the Universidad de La Paz. Falls and winters, she was all frogs. Springs and summers, it was on to people. 

"How'd you end up here?" Dani asked. 

Benitez smiled now. "What? I don't look like a Bolivian?" 

Dani glanced around the room, and shook her head. 

"Argentina," he answered. "I'm from Argentina. I came up here about ten years ago. Same sort of do-gooder, help others type bullshit that you're here for." 

Dani frowned a little, but it was clear that Benitez was just teasing her. He'd stayed, after all, on that same crusade. 

"I met Summer a few years back, learned about the work she was doing, and saw it as my opportunity to get in and visit the Huaca. She goes in on the fertility thing, and I get to go with her and ply my trade." 

Dani nodded. "So, the 'fertility thing'...?" 

"Nuh-uh," Benitez answered. "That's for Summer to talk to you about. You're not the first girl who's been out here for La Iniciativa." 

The brunette was a bit concerned by that particular comment, but said nothing. Instead, she took another sip of the beer. 

"In fact," Benitez grimaced, as if all the fun had come to a crashing halt, "why I don't I bring you up. We've got an early start tomorrow, so she's probably going to need to run through with you why she brought you all the way out here. You can bring the beer." 

***

Dani lay in the dark, unable to fall asleep. She was on a twin mattress, on the floor, and facing a cement wall. Her back turned to the two other women with whom she was sharing the room, Summer Monroe and Taksa Kuchu Carrera apparently sleeping peacefully together in the room's one queen-sized bed. Though Dani hadn't wanted to even be in the same room as the older woman, given what she'd just told her, her options had been limited. The Oveja Negra really only had the two rooms for rent, and Benitez was in the other; Dani had no more interest in making eye contact with the Argentine doctor than she did with the American biologist.

Dani was not, as Benitez had told her, the first girl to be recruited by La Iniciativa. She was not even the first who had come as far as San Eduardo to learn Summer Monroe's dark secret; there had been a German girl that Benitez and Summer had lured out to the Oveja just a year earlier. But it had been Summer's hope that if she could get Dani to come with her on just one trip to a Huaca village, she might be able to convince her to stay. 

"We're doing good things here," Summer had insisted. "You don't even need to commit to anything. Just come to Aya Pampa with me tomorrow." 

But Dani had refused. Tomorrow morning, at first light, she'd be on the first mini-bus heading back to La Paz. Benitez had already lined it up for her with one of the drivers downstairs in the bar. She wanted no part of what Summer was doing, and she certainly wasn't going to play the role that Summer had envisioned. 

Dani wasn't sure what she'd been expecting of Summer Monroe, but her jaw nearly dropped when she first caught sight of the woman. Dani was capable of turning heads in a bar, but Summer was on a whole other level. She was like a movie star, transplanted to the far ends of the Earth. Blonde hair, blue eyes, and an ageless beauty that any woman would have aspired to. Dani couldn't even place how old she was. Thirties? Forties? Gun to her head, she might have guessed forty, but Dani knew for a fact that this would have been impossible; Summer had been in Bolivia for almost two decades now. The woman was just gorgeous. 

She'd been reading in bed when Benitez had knocked on the door, and perhaps Dani's first sign that something was wrong with all this should have been the fact that Summer had answered the door wearing nothing more than a soft pink camisole and a matching pair of boyshort-cut panties. Even more bizarre, however, was the fact that Benitez didn't bat an eye, or that Summer herself made no attempt to cover up or apologize for her state of undress as Dani and Benitez stepped into the room. 

Summer wasn't alone, either -- Dani was politely introduced to a Huaca girl about her own age named Taksa Kuchu. The girl was no more dressed than the older woman, wearing a simple, but low-cut, cotton slip. As with Summer, Benitez didn't react as if any of this was at all odd, that it wasn't a bit weird that the two of them had just walked in on some sort of lingerie party. Taksa Kuchu, Summer explained, was a votary of the Huaca earth goddess, known throughout the valley as "Sipusiki." She was a priestess in the Temple of Sipusiki, in the city of Yapamantataq, but had been accompanying Summer on her mission for the past few years. 

They made pleasant small talk, and Summer asked about Dani's trip. Once Dani had downed her first beer uncomfortably, Summer sent Benitez downstairs to fetch her another. She showed the girl where she'd be sleeping that night; with only two rooms for rent in the Oveja, it was girls here, boys across the hall. There was no running water on the second floor; if Dani wanted to take a shower the following morning -- and she did -- she'd have to use the outdoor shower behind the bar. Once Benitez had returned, and Dani had taken a few more sips of her beer, Summer gathered her courage and dropped the bombshell. 


Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 01



Summer had come down to Bolivia years earlier to study to study a particular amphibian hormone found only here in the Valle de los Reyes. She'd been sent by Ambrosia Pharmaceuticals - which had since been acquired by Connecticut Pharmaceuticals - along with two other colleagues and a translator they'd picked up in La Paz. One of the other researchers had had some sort of accident while off exploring some little Huaca village called Hanan Pacha, and the only way that the chief would let Summer's other colleague take the village's truck and drive the wounded man to the hospital was if Summer herself agreed to stay in the village as collateral. So Summer had stayed. 

But the Huaca took everything from her. Shoes, clothes, everything. They staked her to the ground like she was some sort of livestock. They treated her well, otherwise -- they kept her well-fed, they talked to her, they taught her some quick vocabulary. She got to know them as human beings, got to understand their lives, got to really feel for them. For three days, Summer had been a part of the village, had witnessed the rhythm of daily Huaca life. And it slowly began to dawn on her that there weren't any children -- one or two, maybe, but no more than that. 

There was a curse, the Huaca had explained. The goddess Sipusiki had put a curse on the people, and it had torn apart the Huaca way of life. Young people weren't getting married. They weren't sleeping together. They weren't having children. It had become self-fulfilling: the Huaca believed they weren't capable of reproducing, so they stopped trying. An entire people was on the verge of being wiped out of existence because of a closely-held superstition. 

But that's where Summer came in. She was to be offered to Sipusiki as a flesh sacrifice. There was a ceremony -- t'ojsiy -- typically performed on animals during the spring blossom festival. Simulating the union of the sun, Taytaku, with the Earth, Sipusiki, and the resulting birth of the first Huaca man, the elders of Hanan Pacha had performed the rite on Summer. And they'd done so with her permission. Naked and bound on an altar over the village, Summer had been "entered" by a sacred dildo and fucked to orgasm. Her release signaled the end of the curse upon Hanan Pacha. Curse or no, superstition or not, Summer's act of sacrifice allowed the Huaca peace of mind enough to begin sleeping with one another once more, and children followed. 

But Summer's good deed for the people of Hanan Pacha hadn't gone unnoticed by other Huaca villages throughout the Valle de los Reyes. Supplicants from Uca Pacha, Sumaq Wasi, Yapamantataq, and other Huaca communities began showing up at Summer's camp, begging that she come help them lift the curse, as well. And while Summer may not have believed in the curse itself, she believed in the heartache that these people were suffering, and she reluctantly began to submit herself to their rites and rituals. Instead of returning home with her company, she stayed on in Bolivia, and was invited back into the same villages the following year. She became a part of the Huaca cosmology, offering herself to Sipusiki again and again, from village to village, year after year after year. She was no longer some sort of sacrificial livestock -- she had transcended into some sort of fertility goddess.

Dani gritted her teeth in bed, remembering how Summer had lit up as she told the story. She was horrified by what the biologist had done, taking advantage of these people to declare herself a deity. It was almost as disgusting as what the Huaca were doing to Summer themselves.

But there were more villages in the Valle de los Reyes than Summer had time for each season. And, at some point over the years, the Huaca had decided that sacrificing one of their own simply wasn't going to do. There were communities that Summer was skipping over year after year, far-off villages that she simply couldn't make it to. She founded La Iniciativa with the hope of recruiting help, but interest in playing the part of sacrifice in an Indian sex ritual was as weak as one might have expected. She'd been turned down by a dozen different girls over the past few years, and the one graduate student at the Universidad de La Paz who'd accepted had gone native in one of the villages over the border in Brazil after a single season. 

Summer knew that the likelihood was that Dani, too, would turn her down. This had become Summer's burden to bear. But she, and Taksa Kuchu, and Gabriel Benitez Serrano, had hoped that Dani might come with them just once, that she might be willing to at least witness the work that Summer was doing, witness that hope that she was instilling in these people. And that's all that Summer was asking her at that time, all that Summer wanted of her for now -- to come with her to Aya Pampa, to meet the Huaca Indians there, to see the t'ojsiy and decide for herself. 

They had argued. Dani had cried. Benitez had taken his turn in trying to convince the American girl. As ineffectual as she had been in Honduras, the Kwirku had never asked her to give this much of herself. The town generators went out at eleven, and Dani continued to yell and cry by candlelight. Summer could see that Dani wouldn't be pushed into accompanying them into the jungle, and given that they all had to be up early the following morning, suggested they just get some sleep. They could part ways tomorrow. 

And so Dani had curled into a ball on her mattress, still fully dressed in her jeans and tank-top. But she hadn't been able to sleep. 

It had taken four days for her to get here. Four days. For this? The whole trip had been an unbelievable waste of time. Just like her stint in the Peace Corps, she was leaving without accomplishing anything of substance, disgusted with La Iniciativa and kicking herself for not pushing for more details in her correspondence with Summer Monroe. Four days. Four days! The whole thing had been a waste. 

Dani wiped a tear from her eye. She'd be leaving in the morning. San Eduardo to Rurrenabaque. Rurrenabaque to La Paz. La Paz to New York. New York to Vermont. It was all probably for the best, she told herself. She hadn't seen her mother since Christmas. And it was probably time to get on with her life, to get a real job, to settle down somewhere. When she'd gotten out of school, she'd wanted to change to world, she'd wanted to make a difference. But it simply wasn't to be. 

She thought back to what Benitez had told her in the bar room downstairs. He, like her, had come to Bolivia with dreams of doing good, of helping the Huaca. He had teased her about it, but he might well have been teasing himself. And yet, he had found a way to help. The Huaca had never let him into their villages, not until he'd partnered up with Summer. He was testing drinking water. He was delivering babies. He was administering vaccines. He was making an impact. 

Maybe, Dani told herself. Maybe Benitez might need her help. Maybe an opportunity could still come out of this. Maybe she didn't have to go home just yet. 

Could she do what Summer was asking of her? No. No, of course not. But she could accompany the threesome to Aya Pampa. She could meet the Huaca. She could see their way of life. It seemed a waste to have come this far, and not at least do that. There was no rush to get back to Vermont, no rush to return home. 

"I'll come," she offered softly to the darkened room. "I'll come with you. But that's it."

Dani hadn't been sure that either of the other women was still awake, that either of them would hear her decision. But, from the bed, in English, Summer answered. 

"Good."

***

There was a catch, however. 

"No," Dani said emphatically, shaking her head. "No. No, no, no, no, no." 

She'd emerged from the shower out behind the bar, wrapped in one of the well-worn grey towels Summer had provided her with. There was no bathroom upstairs in the Oveja itself, and what little running water there was in the bar was limited to the barroom. Out back, there was a pair of outhouses, as well as an outdoor shower screened off by a series of overlapping fences. Though there were two showerheads on opposite ends of the stall, Taksa Kuchu and Summer had thankfully given the girl her privacy, a privacy that Summer quickly undermined by how she was asking Dani to dress. 

Dani was standing in the center of the girls' room, upstairs in the Oveja, still dressed in nothing more than the towel. She'd pulled a long, ankle-length skirt from her backpack, fully intending to wear it on the trip out to Aya Pampa. Summer, apparently, had other ideas. 

"You're not going to be the only one," Summer insisted. "Taksa Kuchu. Me. About half the other women in the village. You'll be fine." 

"No," Dani repeated. "I said I'd come with you. I'm coming. But I can't go like that." 

As part of the t'ojsiy ritual, Summer fully intended to walk into Aya Pampa completely naked. It was her part to play -- from the moment she arrived to the moment she left, she'd be completely nude. Taksa Kuchu wouldn't be much more dressed. As a priestess of Sipusiki, and a representative of the temple in Yapamantataq, she'd be wearing the habit of her sisterhood. Unfortunately, this consisted of nothing more than an ankle-length loincloth, reminiscent, in Dani's mind, of the lower half of Princess Leia's golden bikini from "Return of the Jedi." She'd be topless, which was exactly how Summer wanted Dani to present herself to the village of Aya Pampa. 

There was a gentle rapping at the door, but Benitez pushed his way in without bothering to wait for permission. "Everything okay?" 

Dani clutched her towel closer to her body. Nodding towards Summer, she complained, "She wants me to wear my underwear out to that village." 

Benitez's expression was blank. He asked, "Do you have a bathing suit or something?" 

He was missing the point. Dani, exasperated, clutched her forehead with her right hand as she clung to the towel with her left. "I'm not going like that. I'm not going if that's how it has to be." 

"Carlo's already gone with the minibus," Benitez answered unsympathetically. 

"You're not going to be any less dressed than Taksa Kuchu or me," Summer offered. 

"So if half the women in the village are going bare-chested, that means that half of them aren't!" 

"Yes, but they're Huaca women. They're not trying to ingratiate themselves with the locals. They're not trying to fit in with the old ways." 

"I think with everything you're doing for these people, they can make some accommodations on our part." Dani growled. "I don't want to be naked in front of all those people."

"You're not going to be naked," Summer replied. 

"Fine, whatever. Topless, then. In front of a whole village of strangers. In front of you, and Taksa Kuchu and Gabriel." 

Benitez coughed. "You know that I'm a doctor, right?"

"You're not my doctor!" 

"Right, but I've seen women's breasts before."

"You haven't seen mine!" 

The old traditions of the Huaca people, to which Summer had referred, were enforced intermittently and without uniform throughout the valley. In the years before Pizarro and the Spanish, it hadn't been uncommon for the Huaca -- men and women -- to live their lives completely in the nude. Loincloths had become fairly standard over the centuries, but bare-breasted women were a fairly regular sight in the villages. The Indians knew that they needed to cover up when coming into town to trade with the Benianos, and a good percentage of Huaca women carried the fashion back to their homes. But everything that Summer was doing was steeped in tradition, and if she were going to sacrifice herself for the Huaca people, the least she expected of Dani was to do no harm, to not damage the relationship she had with the village of Aya Pampa. 

Summer and Benitez made eye contact, and Summer knew that she had to soothe the young girl. She'd just dumped a tremendous amount on her, and to her credit, Dani did seem willing to at least come with them to Aya Pampa. That alone was more than she'd gotten out of the previous girl. 

"Ssshhh," Summer hushed the brunette. "Okay, okay. Taksa Kuchu and I are going to wear clothes up to the meeting point. So you don't need to worry about Chuy or Beto, or driving out of San Eduardo like that. Once we're there, though, we're going to be hiking up to Aya Pampa with one of the elders, and probably a few of the other villagers, so you are going to need to undress, whether that's down to your underwear or --" she glanced at Benitez, "- or if that's a bathing suit or something like that. I'm okay with you wearing a top, and I'm sure Taksa Kuchu is okay with you wearing a top. But there might be objections from the Huaca." 

Dani ground her teeth. "I'm not going to wear my underwear around that village." 

Summer looked to Taksa Kuchu, who had laid her loincloth out on the bed. "Would you feel more comfortable in something like that? Something more traditional?" 

Dani wanted to cry. Again. She looked at her dress, laying atop her backpack, and thought back to training she'd received in the Peace Corps. They'd been instructed to keep from ruffling too many feathers, too keep from offending any local customs as much as possible. Among the Kwirku, women didn't wear shorts, women didn't wear pants. Toplessness was not unheard of, but the bigger cultural no-no was exposing one's thighs. And so Dani, for more than two years, had gotten up and dressed herself in long, flowing skirts and dresses. She'd ordered them from the States, picked them up in Teguz, or bought them locally, but Dani complied with local customs. And when it came right down to it, was what Summer was asking of her any different? 

"Fine," she relented, caving to Summer's wishes for the second time. She looked to Benitez. "I only have a one-piece, though."

Benitez grimaced. "I think the underwear's probably the way to go, then." 

Dani considered the loincloth. The habit, such as it was, consisted of no more than a front panel and a back panel hung from a waistband -- nothing in between them. She picked it up, and handled the rough, animal-skin material between her fingertips. Looking to Summer, she asked, "Can I wear something under this?"

The look exchanged between Summer and Benitez evidenced that neither was particularly happy about such an arrangement, but Summer seemed to shrug. "A thong, maybe," she offered Dani. "Nothing too obvious." 

Dani nodded. A thong underneath the loincloth. A bra, so long as it could pass muster with Aya Pampa's village elders. Small victories, the girl told herself. 

And so the group set off for the swamps to the north of San Eduardo. Benitez and Summer had decided upon Aya Pampa first because it was relatively close by; should Dani have been running any later in getting in from La Paz, Chuy could have watched over her at the Oveja until the principals of La Iniciativa returned. It was a good three hour drive on muddy roads in Benitez's aging Land Cruiser, and then another four or five hours of hiking through the swamps before they'd arrive at Aya Pampa. But among the stops that Summer would be making over the next few weeks, the village was a relative hop, skip, and a jump from San Eduardo. 

Dani rode in the front seat with Benitez, while Summer and Taksa Kuchu rode in the back. All three women were fully dressed -- Dani in her long, flowing skirt and another simple tank top she'd fished from her backpack. She hadn't packed much, but then, what exactly did she need to bring? She had her camera, but doubted very much that she'd have any interest in showing off pictures of herself frittering about in the Huaca village in nothing more than her bra and a loincloth. On that front, she'd fished through all her things before finding anything she'd want Summer or Benitez or any of the Huaca to see her in, passing over the more well-worn and utilitarian cotton panties in favor of the black lace thong she had on now, and red one that had been stuffed deep into the pack Benitez planned on shouldering for all four of them. Benitez himself had medication, and toothbrushes, and soap, and everything else Dani might have wanted, as well as her passport and visa. 

They chatted along the trip, and Dani got to know her traveling companions better that morning than she'd gotten a chance to the night before. Benitez was, indeed, in his early forties, and had been married when he was younger. Jocular and gregarious, there was something about him that put Dani immediately at ease. Summer, meanwhile, was nowhere near the monster that Dani had thought she was the night before, or the bitch she'd been that morning as they'd fought over the dress code. Smart, confident, and entirely at ease with herself, Summer oozed a sort of grown-up sexual allure. And Taksa Kuchu, who had been relatively quiet to that point, revealed herself to be bubbly and talkative, pumping Dani full of questions about growing up in the Green Mountains, about NYU, and about Honduras, all in heavily-accented pidgin Spanish. The girl had grown up here in the Oriente, and had never even been as far west as Rurrenabaque, so she knew little of life beyond the Valle de los Reyes. 

Dani had no clue how Benitez knew where he was going. He turned down nondescript dirt road after nondescript dirt road, with no street signs or discernible landmarks that Dani could see. It was, as expected, slow-going at times, including a fifteen-minute-long cloudburst that sent gallons of water cascading down upon them. But, as they moved past the three-hour point, Benitez's speed began to slow, and he began to more actively scan the sides of the road for signs that he was getting closer. And, in the middle of a stretch of jungle no different than the stretches of jungle they'd already passed through, the Land Cruiser came to a stop. 

"We're here," he announced. 

"How can you tell?" Dani asked. 

Benitez grinned. "Because our escort is here waiting for us." 

Dani didn't see anyone. She searched the horizon, looking for any sign of life. And only when they began to walk towards the SUV did Dani finally pick them out -- a group of seven Indian men, all but one of them young and muscular-looking. Like Summer herself, the Huaca were not what Dani had expected. In her mind's eye, she had envisioned them as a small, backwards-looking tribe of pygmies, with reeds and bones poking through their noses. Instead, they were tall -- though maybe not as tall as Dani -- with square, angular jaw lines and well-defined Meso-American features. Almost Asian looking. Covered with ritual scarring of vaguely Incan designs, most of the men were, in fact, pierced here, there, and everywhere -- ears, eyebrows, nipples, and lips, among other places. 

Holding court among them was a skinny, frail-looking old man, marked with similar body jewelry and scarring as his younger companions. He lit up as Summer stepped from the Land Cruiser, and called out, "Rap-hi! Rap-hi! Rap-hi, Chaqiska!" 

"Rap-hi!" Summer called back. "Qaray Puka!" 

"Qaray Puka," Benitez explained to Dani as the two of them followed behind. "Aya Pampa's medicine man." 

Dani nodded. 

Summer and the old man embraced, the woman kissing Qaray Puka on the cheek. Pulling back, she scanned younger men, and pointed out those she remembered. "Qarachupa," she said, identifying one, and the moving on to the next. "Achaku. Rukuku."

The man Summer called Rukuku howled and laughed, saying "Ma-na! Ma-na!" He gestured to another man further down to the line, and pointed him out. "Rukuku," he announced. Gesturing to himself, he said, "Asna Charapa." 

"Asna Charapa!" Summer laughed with him. Pointing to the other man, she continued, "Rukuku!" 

"Chaqiska! Chaqiska!" they called. 

"Verano," Benitez explained to Dani. "'Summer.' In Huaca." 




Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 01



Qaray Puka greeted Taksa Kuchu and Benitez, and Summer introduced the old man and his men to the tall, lanky brunette. "'Rap-hi,'" Summer instructed Dani. "'Hello.'" 

"Rap-hee," Dani sounded out to the medicine man. 

Dani was at a distinct disadvantage to her fellow outsiders. Summer, Benitez, and Taksa Kuchu were all, apparently, fluent in the Huaca tongue. Benitez laughed and joked with the Huaca as he unloaded the back of the Land Cruiser, handing his backpack and other supplies to Qarachupa, Achaku, and the other men. Dani, not sure how she was supposed to act, or what exactly was expected of her, stuck close by Summer's side. 

"I'm going to leave my things here," Summer told the girl. "If you don't feel comfortable doing that, you can give your clothes to Asna Charapa over there." 

Dani scowled. "I don't suppose it makes a difference, right? I'm not going to be able to wear them." 

Summer shrugged indifferently. "You don't have anything to worry about with these people," she soothed the girl. "And Gabriel will be with you the entire time." 

Summer called over to Qaray Puka, and while Dani couldn't understand the words themselves, she knew caught the gist of it. "Just give us a minute," Summer seemed to be telling the old man. 

As if granted Qaray Puka's permission, Summer stepped around to the far side of the Land Cruiser, with Taksa Kuchu following a few steps behind. She'd ridden up to this meeting point in relative comfort, dressed in a pair of sandy-colored, loose-fitting, drawstring linen pants, and a matching crochet halter-top. Though casual and less than form-fitting, Summer had nonetheless come off as effortlessly sexy. Taksa Kuchu, meanwhile, was dressed in a pair of three-quarters-length khaki cargo pants that clung to figure, as well as a simple olive-colored tank. Neither of the two women, however, stayed dressed for much longer, now that they'd reached their meeting point. 

Dani steeled herself, and joined them in the road. 

In one motion, Summer pulled her shirt over her head, and revealed that she'd come this far without a bra. Though Dani was caught by surprise by just how young and firm her breasts appeared, defying gravity for a woman her age, the real shock came from the fact that the blonde's nipples were pierced. Each was pierced through with a simple, silver barbell. Summer tossed the shirt into front seat of the Land Cruiser, revealing that her bellybutton, too, was affixed with a dangling, silver piercing. And, if Dani had been shocked by the woman's pierced nipples, she was horrified when she caught the glint of sunlight off a piece of jewelry between the blonde's legs. Summer slithered out of her pants and panties in one go, her bald pussy only further accentuating the stud that sat at the front of her slit -- silver, but with some sort of small jewel embedded within. 

Dani wasn't sure what to think, but she didn't want to get caught staring at the older woman's pussy, either. She supposed that if one were to become a sexual sacrifice in a series of backwoods tribal rites, it really couldn't have been that big of a leap to pierce one's body. Especially when surrounded by a culture in which piercings were so common. As Taksa Kuchu undressed, she revealed none of the same jewelry as the blonde -- nipples, bellybutton. And, though Dani didn't have a good angle, she assumed Taksa Kuchu's pussy has been similarly adorned. 

As for Dani herself, the girl did have a pierced bellybutton, but that was where her own adventures in body piercing had ceased. A simple heart-shaped jewel hung inside the girl's navel. As she pulled her tank up over her head, however, she did reveal that she was the only one of the three women with a tattoo. Her mother had yet to forgive her for it, and though she'd been just seventeen when she'd driven up to East Thetford to get it, Dani still liked the way that the ornately-designed little butterfly looked on the small of her back, sketched out in dark red, blue, and purple ink. 

Glancing nervously at the eight men on the far side of the Land Cruiser, waiting for the women to undress, Dani tossed her tank top into the car on top of Summer's clothes. She was tempted to, as Summer had suggested, bequeath her clothes to Asna Charapa or Benitez for safe-keeping. But neither Taksa Kuchu nor Summer seemed overly concerned by the fact that they were leaving their clothing behind, and neither of the other women had anything stored for safekeeping in Benitez's backpack, as Dani did. Moreover, some of the edge was taken off when Dani saw that the Huaca men were wearing little in the way of clothing themselves -- just short, simple loincloths that did little to hide their bodies. The brunette found the waistband of her skirt with her thumbs, and slid the thin fabric down her thighs, past her knees, and into a puddle around her ankles. She stepped carefully from skirt, and dumped it inside the SUV. 

Summer was stark naked, save for the aforementioned body jewelry, which itself was accompanied by a more traditional collection of necklaces, bracelets, rings, and earrings. In fact, the blonde was wearing about four different pieces of jewelry around her neck, and unsnapped one from behind for Dani to wear. Dani hesitated, but accepted the gift, a necklace of alternating jaguar teeth and silver beads. She allowed the naked woman to hang it around her neck, and found that the largest tooth sat nicely in her cleavage. 

Taksa Kuchu wore nothing but the loincloth Dani had seen her pack that morning. Neither the front nor the back panel could have been more six inches in width, though the material did hang down to the Indian girl's ankles like some sort of bastardized prom gown. The waist was slung dangerously low, and Dani suspected that if Taksa Kuchu had had any pubic hair (she didn't; Dani had just watched her undress), it might have been plainly visible above the band. 

For her own part, Dani stood in the middle of a dirt road in the middle of the Bolivian yungas in nothing more than a unadorned-but-unquestionably-sexy black thong and a matching black bra. She reached for the spare loincloth that the Taksa Kuchu had provided her, and tied it tightly around her hips. As on the Indian girl, the front panel was lower than Dani might have hoped, but it adequately covered the front of her panties, at least. The elastic band of her underwear was plainly visible alongside the strings that held the loincloth together, but there was little that Summer could do about it. 

It was bra that had caused so much heartache and contention that morning, but now that she was standing here with Summer and Taksa Kuchu, Dani began to have second thoughts. Summer was naked. Taksa Kuchu was topless. The Huaca men were wearing nothing more than poorly-fitting loincloths. Were Dani to take to the jungle in the bra-and-panty set, she would arguably be the second-most dressed member of their party, after only Benitez. Without giving it a second thought, and moving quickly -- like she was peeling off a band-aid -- Dani reached around behind her back, and unsnapped the bra. She let it fall forward, slipped her arms from under the straps, and tossed it into the Land Cruiser, never once allowing herself a moment of hesitation. 

Summer said nothing, but her smile showed that she was pleased. 

Dani wasn't sure what to do with her hands, and wasn't entirely comfortable with her tits out in the open. And so, at least for the moment, she draped a forearm over her breasts, hiding the fact that her nipples were rock-hard and standing straight out. Slender hips and a beanpole figure for much of high school, Dani's breasts had grown in late, but they'd grown in with resolve. A borderline D-cup, she was already regretting her decision to cast away her top when she glanced past the Huaca men at the trailhead beyond. 

"So we're going to hike now?" she asked. "Through the swamp?" 

"You can wear your sandals," Summer answered. "It's not a difficult hike, but we are going a few miles through the mud." The blonde and the Indian girl were both barefoot; Qaray Puka and his men were barefoot, as well. Dani, though, doubted her soles were calloused enough to make bare feet a realistic option. 

Summer shut the door to the Land Cruiser, and there was finality to Dani's decision to leave her bra behind. She had another, tucked away inside Benitez's backpack with her change of "clothes" for tomorrow, but she'd decided to go topless for now, and she'd live with her decision for the near future, at least. As they rounded the bumper, Benitez did a double-take, but otherwise called no attention to the fact that Dani had gone back on this morning's argument. And Dani, worried that she was attracting more stares by the fact that she was shielding her breasts from view, let her arms fall her side. 

"I don't suppose you have some sort of DEET, or mosquito repellant, or something?" Dani asked the doctor. 

"Better," Benitez replied. He handed her a necklace made of interwoven fern fronds. He himself was wearing one, and Dani watched as the Huaca gave one each to Summer and Taksa Kuchu. "It's sapumpa fern. It'll keep the bugs away." 

"Native ingenuity," Dani said, adding the fern necklace to stone pendant Summer had just given her. 

"Native ingenuity," Benitez concurred. 

Leaving the Land Cruiser behind, and offering a few words of encouragement to one another, the group set out into the swamps - away from the road, away from San Eduardo, and away from all of Western Civilization.



Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 02



There was no path. Or, at least, there was no path they followed that Daniella D'Annunzio recognized as such. Growing up in the southern reaches of the Green Mountains, Dani had done her share of hiking before. Well-worn trails, blazes painted on trees to mark the way, bootprints in the dirt -- there was none of that here. In fact, Dani could find no evidence that any human being had ever been along their path before. But, whether they were following the occasional broken twig, or a constellation of specific trees, or other subtle cues that Dani was unable to pick out, the Huaca moved with purpose through the Bolivian swampland. 

Two of the younger men -- one of them "Achaku," Dani recalled, though she hadn't been introduced to the other -- led the way, silently scanning the jungle for their path. Taksa Kuchu was next, followed by Dani herself, with Benitez walking just behind her. There were two more young Indians, Qarachupa and Rukuku, and then a stark-naked Summer Monroe walking and talking alongside the elderly Qaray Puka. Asna Charapa and another man followed behind. 

What had she been thinking? Dani felt the bounce of her bare breasts as she walked through the jungle. How could she have made such a rash decision? Here she was, in the back country of South America, with people she'd met only the night before, walking topless into an Indian village. Her clothes were behind her, locked away in Benitez's abandoned Land Rover. Who was she, exactly? Because this was not the Dani D'Annunzio she'd come to know. This wasn't the Dani D'Annunzio who'd refused to go skinny dipping with her friends down at the Harriman Reservoir in high school. This wasn't the Dani D'Annunzio who'd held onto her virginity late into Freshman year of college. This wasn't the Dani D'Annunzio who'd spent the past two years covering her body with long, ankle-length skirts in tropical heat. This was someone else. 

But, as time passed, Dani stopped thinking about her naked breasts. She stopped processing Taksa Kuchu's bare chest the more she saw it, the Indian girl fitting right in with the other half-naked (mostly naked?) Huaca that were accompanying them to Aya Pampa. Benitez paid little attention to her bare skin, almost to the point that Dani wished he would -- she wanted him to make a joke about her being topless, or maybe say something about bringing along a spare sports bra, or something. But any tension about the Italian girl's toplessness was entirely Dani's own, and after a while, it began to lift. 

There were mosquitoes, dragonflies, and other assorted insects circling around them in the air, but the sapumpa fern necklace dutifully performed as promised, keeping Dani bug-free on the hike. She watched the ground beneath her feet, careful to avoid snarled roots and mud puddles. She did occasionally scan the trees around her, fearing that they'd stumble across a band of camera-wielding tourists waiting to capture her in all her glory. Or for a rival tribe of Indians who'd fall upon them with arrows and spears, have their way with the women, and feast on human flesh that night. Or wild animals, waiting to pounce upon them and tear them apart. 

They picked their way through the swamps, avoiding the mud and bogs as much as possible. The Huaca seemed to know exactly which direction to take, but Dani's feet and ankles were soon caked in dark, oily mud in any event. They moved steadily through the jungle, the heat and humidity taxing Dani more than she would have liked to admit. Benitez, behind her, was wearing more clothes than anyone else present, and was clearly sweating through them. 

They kept well hydrated, Benitez regularly sharing the water from his canteen with the three women. "Suya!" Summer called at one point. "Hold on!" Dani glanced back, and watched the naked blonde step just slightly off the path into a small patch of undergrowth. With the entire party watching, the woman squatted and relieved herself. Dani was aghast. Benitez awkwardly scratched the back of his neck and looked away. The Indians themselves chuckled. And Summer, though clearly unembarrassed by going to the bathroom in front of an audience, made a show of offering a sheepish grin, almost as if she was play-acting some sense of shame for Dani's benefit. 

But it was Dani's turn soon enough. They'd been in the car for three hours, and hiking for another two, and it was only a matter of time before Dani started to feel the pressure begin to build in her bladder. Still, she held off as long as she could, hoping that they'd make it to Aya Pampa before she absolutely had to use to the bathroom. What she was expecting there, Dani didn't quite know; it wasn't as if the Huaca would have running water this far out, but maybe there would be some sort of clearly delineated "ladies' room" somewhere away from the village. But another quick water break provided Dani with some sort of emotional cover -- three of the Indian men turned their back to the rest of the group and began pissing into the swamp, and Taksa Kuchu stepped away to do the same. Dani followed the priestess's lead, carefully choosing her footing off of the trail. She was hoping to at least duck behind some sort of tree, but was quickly admonished by Benitez.

"Don't go too far," he warned her. "Greensnakes." 

Dani shuddered, and opted for the lesser of two evils. She was still in plain sight of the rest of the group, and she was sure that she was being watched by the Huaca men. But she kept her back to them, slid her thong and loincloth down her thighs in one motion, and squatted in the jungle a few feet from where Taksa Kuchu was doing the same. When she stood, she needed to re-tie and tighten the loincloth, doing so red-faced as she rejoined the rest of the party. 

Dani slowly lost track of time, the jungle becoming repetitive green background on her hike. Two, maybe three hours into the walk, the heavens opened and a cloudburst sent wave after wave of warm, tropical rain down upon them. The Huaca seemed to pay the rain no mind, their pace slowing but not altogether stopping. For them, a torrential downpour was a way of life, something they'd simply grown accustomed to. It felt good on Dani's bare skin, washing away the mud and sweat and grime she'd built up over the course of the trip. But her hair was soaked, and she dreaded the inevitable frizzy bird's nest it would become in the humid aftermath. And even more of a concern was the fact that while her animal-skin loincloth resisted the precipitation quite well, the same couldn't be said of the thong that Dani was wearing beneath it. 

The rain passed, the clouds cleared, and the sun returned in minutes, the only evidence of the rainfall the rivulets of water that now trickled down Taksa Kuchu's back in front of Dani. Benitez was drenched, and Dani now suffered from wet pair of panties beneath her loincloth, but the rest of the party was no worse for wear, and they plugged on without much comment. 

Dani smiled as she listened to Achaku laugh and joke with the other man at the front of the line -- his name was Kusillu, Dani had learned. The two men were happy and giddy as they picked their way through swampland, no doubt buoyed by the guests that they were leading back to Aya Pampa. To hear Taksa Kuchu explain it, the t'ojsiy ritual was part of a larger "phancha" festival, a celebration of blossoming and summer that was already underway. There would be food and drinks and partying throughout the night, all centered around the sacrifice that Summer was making of herself. And though Dani was still squeamish and uncomfortable with what she'd be witnessing, she couldn't help but derive some sense of vicarious happiness and excitement from the tones and facial expressions of Indians around her. 

Summer chatted with Qaray Puka, Taksa Kuchu joked and flirted with the other Huaca men. Benitez was occasionally pulled into conversations taking place in the Indian tongue around him, but for the most part, he was Dani's only link to the rest of group. Going back-and-forth in Spanish, Benitez offered the girl a quick tutorial on Huaca culture and etiquette, and started instilling in her a few quick phrases. 

"Imataq sutiyaki?" he asked. 

"Daniella sutiymi," Dani practiced. "My name is Daniella." 

By the time that Dani noticed a more well-worn path, they had arrived at Aya Pampa. She guessed it was maybe two or three o'clock in the afternoon, but after a four-plus hour hike through the hot and humid Bolivian swamps, she was ready to curl up and go to sleep for the night. She had sensed they were getting closer to the village by the way their pace had quickened, by the tone of conversations taking place around her. Soon enough, she noticed a man-made clearing around her. They ascended a small hill, and then picked their way down a steep decline into a narrow little ravine packed tight with native huts. 

There were cliff walls on either side of the village, each perfectly vertical and covered completely by a blanket of green moss, sapumpa ferns, and strong, fragrant flowers. The walls themselves were maybe twenty-five feet apart at their widest point, and rose a good three stories above the village; Dani was reminded of some of the narrower streets and alleys of Greenwich Village. There was a little brook that ran haphazardly between the wood-and-bark houses, nothing more than a gentle trickle of water. It was dark, and damp, and cool -- but also so well-hidden and tucked away that Dani could easily see how the Huaca had avoided much attention over the prior centuries. 

As Dani met the eyes of the villagers, she suddenly became self-conscious once more about her naked breasts. It was true -- there were certainly more than a dozen women and girls similarly attired, their surprisingly firm breasts displayed out in the open as nonchalantly as on any European beach. But there were others wearing Western-looking tank-tops, animal skin-bras, and native-looking wraps that Dani thought resembled prehistoric tube tops. She kicked herself again for leaving her bra back in the Land Rover, allowing Summer and Taksa Kuchu to dictate to her the social norms of the Huaca people. Once they'd gotten settled, she planned on asking Benitez for the one stuffed deep in his backpack. 

Dani couldn't get over how many people were packed so tightly into the little ravine. The houses stood maybe a foot or so from one another, interspersed with jungle trees. And the path that followed the brook was, at most, maybe twice the shoulder-width of a full-grown man. Somehow crammed into this maze were maybe fifty to sixty people -- men, women, and children -- seated out in front of their houses, poking their heads from open doorways, gathered around gentle fires. Their faces lit up as the naked blonde entered their midst -- it would be another fruitful year, it would be another year blessed by Sipusiki, it would be another year marked by Summer's pornographic sex show. 

"Rap-hi! Rap-hi!" Summer giggled as she strutted through the center of town dressed in nothing more than her body jewelry. She seemed to know where she was going, and so she led the way, greeting the Indians along the path with a smile and a wave as if on parade. Taksa Kuchu and Qaray Puka followed close behind, a nervous Dani trailing with Benitez. 

At some point along the trail, Dani had become divorced from what would transpire tonight. She'd never fully forgotten her own toplessness, but she'd grown somewhat accustomed to it. Here and now, however, it all struck home. These people, these Huaca, were going to violate Doctor Monroe in an elaborate sex ritual to please some native fertility goddess. Summer was here to fuck their sacred silver dildo. And Dani was here because Summer wanted to convince her to do the same. The girl grew cold, and hugged herself around the chest. 

Towards the head of the little brook, there was a cave carved out of the rock wall, sitting a few feet above ground level and accessible by a dirt ramp that the Huaca had built decades earlier. Summer stepped up inside, and the rest of the group followed, Dani taken by surprise by just how elaborately the interior had been furnished. They had to push their way through a beaded curtain, and stepped not onto a hard, stony surface, but rather animals furs laid over some sort of reed mat. There were pots and pans and jugs and plants hanging from the ceiling, and a warm fire glowing in a pit at the center of the room. Paintings adorned the rock walls, with gold and silver dangling here and there throughout the cave. 

Four aging men sat around the fire, contemporaries of Qaray Puka. Summer found the chief immediately, a wizened, graying old man that made Dani think of Mr. Miyagi. "Uturunku," Summer addressed him, smiling all the while. She reminded the man of Taksa Kuchu's name, and Dr. Benitez's, and introduced the brunette standing topless with her. 

"Daniella sutiymi," Dani offered nervously, much to the delight of the old, Huaca men present. 

"Dah-nel-a," Uturunku sounded out. "Dah-nel-a." 

"Ma-na! Ma-na!" Qaray Puka laughed, and took a step closer to the topless girl. He gently took her by the shoulders, and turned her so that her back was facing the chief. Dani had no idea what he was doing, and looked to Benitez for guidance. The priest offered, "Qapila." 

"Qapila!" the chief replied. He laughed, and repeated, "Qapila!" 

"'Butterfly,'" Summer translated. "He likes your tattoo." 

"Qapila!" one of the other men repeated. Apparently, Dani had earned herself a nickname already. 

Uturunku may have been a little old man, but he had a presence about him that was undeniable. When he spoke, everyone else in the room fell silent. They looked to him for approval, looked to him for guidance. This was a chief who'd earned the respect of his people. He made eye contact with Dani, and gestured towards an open spot around the fire. 

"Sit and have a drink with him," Summer explained. "Chicha qullisara." 

Dani grimaced, thinking back to the high-proof corn liquor she'd downed at the Oveja Negra last night. Summer, sensing the hesitation, explained, "One ceremonial drink. As a show of his hospitality." 

Dani nodded, and took a seat around the fire. One by one, the other men got up to leave, allowing Uturunku to have Dani all to himself. Taksa Kuchu, thankfully, settled in next to the brunette, the bare skin of her arm touching Dani's own. 

"Qaray Puka is going to take me to get ready for the t'ojsiy," Summer announced, the medicine man already turning from the cave and beckoning the blonde. "I'll see you tonight. Afterwards." 

"Already?" Dani asked, shocked that they weren't going to be allowed a little more time to settle in. 

"It's tonight," Summer explained. "And we'll be leaving tomorrow morning. We're not here in Aya Pampa for very long." 

"And I'm going to make my rounds while we still have some sunlight," Benitez added. 

"Wait, what?" Dani asked. The only reason she'd come to Aya Pampa, the only reason she'd subjected herself to all this, was the possibility that Benitez might have a need for her -- taking water samples, leading health demonstrations, delivering babies or whatever. But more pressingly, she didn't want to be left here with Uturunku. "No, let me help." 

Benitez looked to Summer, and then over at the chief. He shook his head, and told the brunette, "No, stay here. Taksa Kuchu will stay here with you for now. Visit with the chief. You're a newcomer, a new guest. I won't be far." 

Dani frowned. Beside her, Taksa Kuchu had already engaged the chief, and was jabbering back and forth with him. Dani didn't like being left here in the cave, even if she did have Taksa Kuchu to translate for her. Not that she was worried about being overpowered or threatened by Uturunku in any way, but the whole thing was awkward and weird. She was topless, and seated alongside another topless girl, casually engaged in conversation by an old Indian man in a cave. 

Across the fire, Uturunku met Dani's eyes. He reached for a large, glass bottle, and began to empty the entirety of its contents into a bowl carved from a sizable green gourd. Chicha. More chicha than Dani cared to drink, truth be told. Everything she learned in the Peace Corps, however, told her to be open to new cultures, and Dani knew it would be unforgivable to not take a few sips, at least. 

Uturunku took a swig from the gourd, smiled, and passed the chicha to Dani. Nervously, the brunette tipped her head and knocked back a mouthful for the liquor. Not unlike the previous night, when a cold Paceña had been just the thing after a tortuously long bus trip, the chicha seemed to hit the spot, to warm her up from the inside out, to buoy her spirits after the hike through the swamps. Dani, though, was a bit worried about the alcohol's effects with an empty stomach. 

As Uturunku asked a question of Taksa Kuchu, Dani found herself listening to the sounds from outside the cave. There was an excited murmur that had overtaken the village of Aya Pampa, and though Dani was unfamiliar with what the village was like on a day-to-day basis, there was electricity in the air, not unlike one of the cold, Green Mountain Christmas Eves of her childhood. No matter how vulgar or amoral what Summer planned to do was, it was clear that the Huaca did not share Dani's sense of disapproval. 

"He wants to know about snow," Taksa Kuchu translated for the chief, pulling Dani's attention back inside the cave. 

"Snow?"

She quickly warmed to the gentle Uturunku. She had wanted to villainize him, villainize his entire tribe, for what they were planning to do to Summer, what Summer hoped that they'd do to Dani herself. But this was not a lecherous old man, or some sort of sexual predator residing in the jungle. Uturunku was warm, welcoming, and seemed to try his best to put Dani at ease. A few more rounds of chicha certainly didn't hurt, but Dani found herself drawn to the old man in a way that she might have to a goofy old uncle at a family picnic. There was an occasional, casual glance at Dani's chest, but Dani quickly rationalized that she might be more uncomfortable if he didn't, that a relaxed and cursory once-over of her breasts was better than avoiding them and risking over-sexualizing them. He did the same to Taksa Kuchu, and following the votary's lead, Dani paid no notice to the chief's attention. 

He laughed and joked with them, asking Dani questions of the outside world, and drawing parallels to the things he knew about in his own. He told stories about his wives - Dani gathered that he had four, and when she gently teased him about keeping so many women happy, Uturunku mimed wiping flop sweat from his brow and admitted to the two girls that having one wife, the way the Americans did, would be much, much easier. He talked to them about the history of his village, and the flowers and plants that grew along the little ravine's walls. He asked Dani about Vermont, and about school, and about the food and wine she had back in the States. And, once he'd discovered that she'd spent the past two years living among a native tribe in Honduras, Uturunku was enraptured. 

Soon enough, the outside world faded away. Dani had probably drunk too much chicha already, but the gourd continued to be passed around the little circle, Taksa Kuchu and Uturunku each taking their sip before passing it back to the brunette. Whatever Benitez was doing, whatever the Huaca were doing to Summer, seemed less important than the bonding that Dani was doing in the cave. She laughed along with the aging chief, engaged by his stories and his presence. She realized that, in two years, she'd never spent this much quality time with any of the Kwirku -- their relationship, perhaps tainted by an earlier Peace Corps volunteer, had started out as almost adversarial and contemptuous in both directions. A sliver of doubt began to appear in Dani's thinking -- she could, finally, understand what Summer was doing here among the Huaca, even just a little bit. 




Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 02



Uturunku did his best to explain the curse, and to explain how Summer fit into their particular world view. 

Some years ago, long before the Ambrosia Pharmaceuticals group had been sent from New York, the Huaca had been governed by a warrior king in Yapamantataq. Though the Huaca lived in little villages stretched across the Valle de los Reyes, Hatun Puka was chief among chiefs. But one day, he grew sick and passed away, and his first-born son ascended to throne. This, however, displeased Sipusiki. For, you see, Uru Kuchi was not, in fact, Hatun Puka's son. Betrayed by his wife Apasanka, Hatun Puka had been poisoned by his closest advisor, Chimpilaku, who was Uru Kuchi's real father. Having staged a coup to overthrow chief-among-chiefs, Apasanka, Chimpilaku, and Uru Kuchi had damned the Huaca in the eyes of the fertility goddess. 

Sipusiki cursed the Huaca people throughout the valley, and they were unable to have children. Aya Pampa, Uca Pacha, Wasi Wasi -- the story was the same from village to village to village, and the elders soon began to worry about whether the Huaca would survive. Huaca medicine men performed the t'ojsiy time and time again, on animals and Huaca women alike, sacrificing them to Sipusiki. But Sipusiki was not pleased, and so long as Uru Kuchi sat on the thrown in Yapamantataq, the Huaca were doomed. 

Uturunku's eyes lit up as he got the next part. 

And then, in the small, outlying village of Hanan Pacha, Sipusiki blessed Chaqiska. An outsider, a doctor, a woman named "Monroe," Sipusiki decided that the Huaca could only be saved by the gracious sacrifice of a non-Huaca, as the Huaca women themselves were cursed. Walking alongside her in spirit, and possessing a part of her, Sipusiki became Chaqiska, Chaqiska became Sipusiki. The t'ojsiy was performed, and Chaqiska's "liberation" became the liberation of Hanan Pacha as a whole. 

One by one, Chaqiska visited village after village, and marched on Yapamantataq with the High Priestess of Sipusiki, overthrowing Uru Kuchi and ensuring the blessing of Sipusiki once more. Chaqiska's sacrifice having pleased the fertility goddess once, she continued to return to Hanan Pacha, to Yapamantataq, to Wasi Wasi, to Aya Pampa each and every year, ensuring the birth of a new generation of Huaca people. 

Dani scratched her head. She had a difficult time envisioning Summer Monroe staging a coup of her own here in the Oriente, but it was clear that her presence had played strongly into the beliefs and magicks of the Huaca people. Unfortunately, it seemed that they'd almost become too dependent on the outsider, almost as if they were unable to "please Sipusiki" or have children on their own without her presence. Or, barring that, without the presence of some other non-Huaca girl, which was why Dani was here in the first place. 

The fire flickered against the walls of the cave, and Dani realized that she'd completely lost track of time. From the hours in Benitez's Land Rover to the hours in the swamps to the hours in the cave here in Aya Pampa, imbibing shot after shot of chicha, Dani was baffled when she glanced through the beaded curtains to find that the sun had already gone down. 

"Phancha!" Uturunku announced happily, apparently noticing the same thing. "Phancha! Phancha!" 

"The Blossom Festival," Taksa Kuchu translated. "It's time to celebrate." 

The little village had been transformed by the time that Dani emerged, weak-kneed and more than a bit tipsy, from the chief's cave. Torches were everywhere, and all of Aya Pampa was bathed in the soft orange glow of their light. Streamers made of flower petals hung overhead, and the entire ravine echoed with laughter, cheering, and rhythmic drumbeats. There was singing somewhere up the little stream, a silly song from what Dani could tell, but a song of absolute joy. Faces were painted, hair was done up, and the Huaca seemed to be dressed in the "Sunday best," clean clothes and loincloths all around. 

Uturunku wrapped his arms around an approaching girl, maybe eighteen or nineteen at the oldest. She smiled broadly as he gave her instructions, glancing in Dani's direction all the while. She, like Dani and Taksa Kuchu, was wearing nothing more than an animal-skin loincloth. But, unlike the drab brown that the two visitors sported, she was wearing a brick-red loincloth, speckled with alternating white stripes and white dots. Dani had a difficult time believing that such a design could have come from an animal naturally, but Taksa Kuchu later explained Bolivian tapirs did have such coloration when they were young. 

"Tutakuru," Taksa Kuchu introduced the girl. "Uturunku's niece. She's here to prepare us for the ceremony." 

Dani blanched. "No, no, no," she stammered, backing away and waving her hands. Looking to Taksa Kuchu, she yelped, "No! No! I'm only here to observe. That's what Summer said." 

Taksa Kuchu nearly keeled over laughing, and after she explained Dani's concerns to Tutakuru and Uturunku, they did the same. "It is fine," Taksa Kuchu explained. "You are not being prepared for the t'ojsiy. That's much more extensive than this. Tutakuru just wants to do our hair, and maybe apply some make-up." 

Dani was unnerved, but breathed a quick sigh of relief. The last thing she wanted was some sort of misunderstanding in which she got penetrated and violated in Summer's stead. That may have been Summer's intention in bringing her here to the Oriente, but it was nothing that Dani had any interest in. But, despite reassurances from Taksa Kuchu and a shaking of the head from Tutakuru, the brunette was still on edge -- she scanned the crowds for any sign of Summer or Benitez, looking for a more familiar Western face. 

Not seeing either, Dani dutifully bid Uturunku adieu, and followed Tutakuru and Taksa Kuchu through the labyrinth of Huaca and Huaca houses that made up Aya Pampa. She was stared at, sure enough, but not because she was topless. If anything, the arrival of Phancha that evening had spurred many of the more modern-dressed Huaca to resume their traditional garb, and there were even more women topless than when Dani and her party had first entered the village. But she was different and out-of-the-ordinary, with Mediterranean features, big brown eyes, and paler skin -- though admittedly not as pale as Summer. But she was an outsider, like Summer Monroe. And if Summer were blessed by Sipusiki, would Dani be the same? 

Among the Huaca people, Dani doubted more than a handful of them might ever have even seen a white-skinned person. They probably had run-ins with the local Benianos, Quechua and mestizos alike. And there were probably a few people of Spanish descent who made their way out into the yungas. But if even Taksa Kuchu, who seemed worldly by comparison, had never gone further than Rurrenabaque, Dani doubted that Uturunku or Qaray Puka or Tutakura had ventured much further. 

Dani's novelty was driven home as she ducked inside one of the small, wooden huts, following closely behind Tutakura. As she entered, she was stared at, giggled over, and pawed by a collection of teenage girls who looked about the same age as Tutakura herself. The chief's niece did her best to introduce those present, but Dani quickly forgot most of their names -- an almost indistinguishable collection of t's and q's and u's. 

"Dani sutiymi," Dani introduced herself, much to the delight of the chattering teenagers. 

"Ma-na," Taksa Kuchu giggled, and gestured at the butterfly tattoo on Dani's back. "Sutiyas 'Qapila'!" 

"Qapila!" the girls shouted in unison, one of them being so bold as to touch the colorful little design on Dani's back. Dani herself shrugged -- if Summer was okay being "Chaqiska," it wouldn't hurt for Dani to play the part of "Qapila." 

Dani and Taksa Kuchu, it seemed, had stumbled into some sort of bath house, and the assembled girls were preening themselves as if readying for the prom. Dani supposed it was the closest equivalent in Huaca society. The Kwirku had gone all out for the Harvest festival, and maybe Phancha, representing the Spring and blossoming and fertility and planting, was held in the same esteem among the Huaca. Every single girl was topless, and some of them wore nothing at all. Like Summer and Taksa Kuchu, they were pierced here, there, and everywhere, silver protruding from navels and nipples and more intimate places. And, like the guides who'd hiked into Aya Pampa with them from the road, the girls also were adorned with intricate, Inca-inspired scars and brands, none terribly intrusive upon their natural beauty, but present nonetheless. 

Tutakura beckoned one of the other girls, and the two immediately went to work on the American girl in their midst. Dani hadn't showered since that morning -- before the car ride, before the hike through the swamps, before the afternoon in the smoke-filled cave -- and soon found herself being scrubbed clean by Tutakura's companion. The girl was rough, positioning Dani in ways that allowed her to better clean the girl's back and underarms. And Dani, still being a bit more drunk than she'd intended to be, had no choice but to do as she was instructed. She offered the occasional expletive as her bath maid scrubbed a bit too hard, or pushed her too roughly to her knees, but otherwise rolled with the punches. 

Dani was on her hands and knees when she heard a squeal from Tutakura, and she knew she was in trouble. She glanced back at her hips, finding that Tutakura had hooked her thumb under the waistband of Dani's black thong, and was screaming in delight at her friends, all of whom seemed to be laughing at Dani's expense. Dani glanced to Taksa Kuchu for help. 

Unlike the American girl, the Huaca priestess had been left to tend to herself. More accustomed the ways of the Huaca, and probably well-versed in the ways of the Phancha, Taksa Kuchu was squatting on the dirt floor naked, her loincloth having been hung on the bathhouse wall for the time being. She had washed up, and was now carefully applying a thick red paste in simple designs on her forearms. "They like your panties," Taksa Kuchu translated. 

"I can tell," Dani answered squeamishly. "But...wait! Wait!" Before she had an opportunity to fight Tutakura and her friend, her thong was being tugged down her thighs and out from under her loincloth. She tried to fight them, weakly, but she was no match for the Huaca girls in her inebriated state, and resigned herself to pleading with them to give her underwear back after it had been completely stripped from her. 

Dani watched in horror as Tutakura slithered across the bathhouse and slipped the black thong on herself. The chief's niece, like Taksa Kuchu, had completely undressed, and as she put Dani's underwear on, she was wearing the black lace material and nothing more. Taksa Kuchu simply laughed along with the other girls at the sight of Tutakura in Dani's panties, and gave Dani a sheepish look, as if to say, "We tried to warn you." 

Having had her fun, Tutakura shed the black thong, and guiltily offered it back to Dani. Dani took it back, but hesitated before putting it back on. Leaving aside the fact that it had just been on another woman, a stranger, Dani thought that she maybe she was being a bit ridiculous in wearing the thong in the first place. She was surrounded by a room full of naked and half-naked girls, none of whom were wearing any more than their own loincloths and body jewelry in preparation for tonight's ceremony. Perhaps the underwear was going to make her even more of a spectacle out in the village than she'd be without it, doing her best to just try to fit in. She grimaced, balled up the panties in her right hand, and refrained from putting them back on. At least for now. 

Dani winched at Tutakura's friend reached for the knot on the side of her loincloth, but she didn't fight this time. Tutakura and the other girl continued to scrub, and though Dani insisted that she was more than capable of washing herself, her offers to help went ignored. She jumped a bit when Tutakura's hand found her pussy, but the teenaged girl was doing nothing more than rubbing a damp washcloth over it, and Dani bit her lip and looked the other way. 

Gentle hands found the heart-shaped pendant that hung from Dani's belly-button, and Tutakura posed a question to Taksa Kuchu, gesturing at Dani's breasts. "She's offering to pierce your nipples," Taksa Kuchu translated slyly, knowing full well what Dani's reaction would be. 

"Thanks. But no thank you." 

Scrubbed clean, with the sweat washed from her back and her neck, and the swamp mud washed from her feet, Dani was set back, sitting up with her legs bent under her. The sapumpa fern necklace had been removed, and in its place were a series of new fronds, carefully woven into Dani's long, brown hair by Tutakura. A new girl, meanwhile, who'd apparently finished getting ready herself, joined the chief's niece in preparing the American girl, and squatted down in front of Dani was a small bowl of the foul-smelling red paste. As Dani sat still while Tutakura played with her hair, this new girl reached up and painted a single red line down the length of Dani's front, from between her breasts all the way down to the start of her pubic hair. There were two more, one on either side, starting from just under each breast and stopping at the brunette's pelvis. A similar pattern was painted on Dani's face -- a long, red line running down the center of face from her forehead to her chin, with another pair flanking it on either side, from just below her eyes to her jaw line. 

The girl was not quite done yet, however. In contrast with just how non-sexual Dani's toplessness had been since arriving in Aya Pampa, the girl reached up and twisted each nipple. Dani gasped, both out of surprise and for the shiver the act had sent shooting up and down her spine. She was loathe to admit it, but she'd become a little turned on by all the attention she'd been receiving, with so many hands running up and down her body. By no means was she a lesbian, or even somewhat curious, but Dani's nipples had been standing straight out before being tweaked, and now there was no hope of them subsiding before she left the bath house. They were, however, now a deep, crimson red, coated in a darker shade of the paint that Dani's wore over the rest of her body. For her final act, the girl pushed Dani forward, and back onto her hands and knees, with Tutakura taking a break from the sapumpa ferns in Dani's hair. Covering her entire hand in an orange-yellow paint, the girl place an upside-down handprint on Dani's right buttock. 

Nudity and panty-stealing and body-painting were not in Dani's original agreement to come with Summer. But Summer was nowhere near by. Benitez was off somewhere else in the village. And only Taksa Kuchu was with her, and Taksa Kuchu was Huaca herself, and apparently saw nothing strange in the way that Dani was being treated by her tribeswomen. Like she had so many times since arriving in San Eduardo the previous night, Dani relented and rolled with the punches. 

Taksa Kuchu collected the loincloth that she'd loaned Dani that morning, and Dani herself was offered another by one of the older girls in the bathhouse. Like the tapir-skin that Tutakura had been wearing when she was first introduced, the new loincloth was decidedly more ornate than the simple brown one Dani had been wearing. It was shorter, only long enough that it looked like it might stop at her knee, but had been made from a spotted jaguar. Given where the jaguar ranked in most South American cosmology, Dani decided that it would be an insult to turn the gift down, even if she was going to look like something out of Tarzan, or maybe Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. Apparently, however, it wasn't a loan, or even a straight-up gift -- the girl looked expectantly at Dani's right hand, which held her own balled-up black lace thong. Dani again glanced to Taksa Kuchu for help, but again found none coming, and decided to relent. She had more underwear back at the Oveja Negra, and another pair in Benitez's backpack should she decided that the loincloth was simply too revealing. If anything, Dani wondered if she was shortchanging the Huaca girl by trading a pair of mass-produced Eve Intimates-brand panties for genuine jaguar fur. 

Her sandals were the next upgrade. Dani had worn a pair of sporty, Teva-like sandals through the swamps. Summer, Taksa Kuchu, and their Huaca escort had all been barefoot, but Dani was not so sure-footed that she'd felt comfortable traipsing through the jungle without something on her feet. Along the way, they'd gotten caked in mud and dirt and sand, and by the time she'd taken them off to enter the bathhouse, they'd been almost unrecognizable. To her rescue came one of Tutakura's friends, who arrived late but carrying a pair of strappy, straw-colored Spanish espadrilles that looked as if they'd been purchased from a high-end shoe store somewhere in New York. Dani couldn't believe her eyes -- they were the sort of shoes that American girls dropped small fortunes on, and they were here, in a remote jungle village on the Western edges of the Amazon. 

Apparently, Taksa Kuchu explained after hearing the story herself, the girl's husband had traded with one of the local Benianos, but the girl, unaccustomed to the high-heeled wedge, had been unable to wear them. Where the Beniano had procured the sandals was a source of mystery in and of itself, and Dani guessed that the story of their journey was no less interesting than her own. Unlike the loincloth, these were offered gratis, as a gift, as the Huaca girl had no interest in them, and Dani had nothing more on her person to trade. 

When they were all done, Dani followed Taksa Kuchu and the wide-smiling Tutakura out of the bathhouse. Taksa Kuchu had donned the same, familiar loincloth she'd been wearing since they left the Land Rover, while Dani herself was in the newly acquiried jaguar skin - which, unfortunately, was a bit shorter than she'd expected, falling only a little more than half-way down her thighs on both the front and back. She was extremely aware of just how exposed her pussy was, out in the open for anyone who happened to glance her way as she walked. While she had longed to be in Benitez's reassuring company for the better part of the afternoon, she was second-guessing herself now -- she doubted she'd last long in his presence without asking for her spare pair of panties. She was naked, after all, nothing but two narrow animal-skin panels protecting her from complete and total exposure. She wore the espadrilles, as well, the straps climbing up her calves and holding themselves in place. She was a bit of a sight, she knew, walking around Aya Pampa in a pair of heels, but damn if she didn't look good. If she were going to be this naked in front of Benitez, she at least didn't want him to recoil at the sight of her. Her hair was pinned up, bringing the senior prom metaphor to a head, woven through with sapumpa fern as a practicality to keep mosquitoes away. 

They found Benitez playing a shell game just upriver, the omnipresent walls of the ravine flickering in torch light on either side. He did a double take when he saw Dani, and Dani smiled to herself, knowing that all the primping and body-painting had had their desired effect. She felt a bit stupid, covering in paint, decked out in jaguar-skin, and wearing high-heeled sandals, especially given that Benitez himself was still wearing the same outfit he'd worn all day. Oh well, Dani thought to herself -- it wouldn't be the first time that there were different rules for men and women. 

As Dani approached the shell game, however, and with all eyes on her, she felt a horrifying tug at her hip, and sensed the jaguar-skin loincloth begin to slide from her hips. She shrieked, much to the joy of the crowd, and managed to catch the loincloth before it completely slid off -- but not before she was sure she'd exposed her pussy to Benitez. Redfaced, she carefully retied the loincloth, and reassured herself that Benitez was both a doctor and a gentleman. 




Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 02



"They coaxed you out of your underwear?" Benitez laughed. 

Dani put a hand over her eyes in a combination of mock and genuine shame. 

"You wouldn't be the first," he went on. "Huaca girls like to get their hands on Western clothes." 

That explains the espadrilles, Dani thought to herself. "Okay, okay, you guys were right. I should have just started off this way." She took a seat on a log next to Benitez, extremely careful about just how she sat. 

Benitez shrugged. "When in Rome..."

Dani scowled. "So where's your loincloth?" she teased. "Where's your nipple piercings and body paint?" 

"Believe me," Benitez smiled, "if these people had any interest in me for their ritual, I'd be done up in traditional garb the way you and Summer are." 

Dani swallowed hard. "I'm not...?"

"No," Benitez laughed. "No. A million times no. That's what Summer is here for." 

"Just making sure." 

The party seemed to develop all around them. Bottles of chicha and corn beer were all around them, and Dani, sobering up somewhat from the afternoon in the cave with Uturunku, developed a taste for a sweet, fermented fruit juice that was made from something called a "carambola." There was cheering, and laughing, and singing, the villagers each stopping by to shake Benitez's hand and meeting Dani. "Qapila sutiymi," Dani introduced herself, eliciting a raised eyebrow from Benitez. 

"It's easier being Qapila," Dani explained. "Daniella D'Annunzio would have a hard time with all of this." 

"You're not 'Qapila' quite yet," Benitez joked. "You're still 'Sika Sika," a caterpillar in her cocoon." He gestured up the river, vaguely in Summer's direction somewhere out of sight. "She's the Qapila." 

Dani chose to ignore the comment. If what Summer intended to do was necessary in becoming a butterfly, Dani was happy to remain "Sika Sika," thank you very much. Instead, she asked, "Where is she?"

Benitez looked up the river again. "Up the river somewhere." He shrugged, and wrinkled his brow. "Maybe out in the jungle? There's probably a little altar or something where they're readying her for the t'ojsiy." 

"Aren't you worried about her? Don't you want to know where she is?" Dani asked, wondering if there was anything worse that the Huaca could do to her that she hadn't already volunteered for. 

"I used to be," Benitez answered. "When I first started traveling with Summer, I was. But she'd been doing this for years before I showed up on the scene, and she knows these people better than I ever will. She trusts them, trusts them absolutely." He took a sip of his corn beer. "And so I have to, too." 

Benitez nodded in Uturunku's direction as he joined the party, and Dani offered a little wave. Behind him was Tutakura, who made a b-line across the little clearing and grabbed at Dani's wrist. 

"The chimaychi," Benitez explained. "She wants you to dance with her." 

Dani had no interest in dancing. She'd certainly drunk enough chicha and carambola wine in order to dance if she were back in New York, but back in New York she never had to worried about the way her tits bounced around in the open, or whether her loincloth was going to fall aside and expose her once more. But Tutakura was insistent, and no amount of head-shaking from Dani seemed to get her lack of interest across. Benitez was no help, laughing at her protestations, and Taksa Kuchu had already joined a number of the girls from the bathhouse in a long line of skipping and hopping dancers. 

As it turned out, there wasn't much to the chimaychi dance, at least not in the one-step, two-step nature of the waltz or the tango. The more important thing, Dani realized, was that the dancer display unbridled joy, and so long as her hips and shoulders shook in some relation to the rhythm of the jungle drums, Dani would be all right. She felt like a stripper, jiggling around in nothing more than an animal-print loincloth, and her breasts seemed to move independently of the rest of her body. But, aside from Benitez, she was surrounded by men and women similarly attired, similarly undulating in beat with the music, and similarly looking ridiculous. So long as she was able to forget that the Argentine doctor was there, Dani was able to cut loose a little, to forget her current state of undress, and to have a good time. 

Dani, as it turned out, wasn't the only one to lose her loincloth that night. There was a man in his late twenties who lost his while dancing to the beat, and the gathered crowd burst out in laughter. It was all in good fun, however, and the naked young man smiled sheepishly, retied his loincloth, and rejoined the chimaychi line with no lingering bad feelings. Dani had laughed along with everyone else, and so when the knot holding her own loincloth slipped and dropped down her thighs once more, all she could do was laugh at herself. Unfortunately, she was careening around a small fire at a fairly high speed, and the sudden exposure was enough to trip her up, and start a small collision of bodies as she fell to the ground and grappled for her only clothing. 

"I think we've seen just about enough of that," Dani wheezed as she returned to Benitez and his log bench. She reached into his backpack, felt the cup of her lace bra, and managed to lay her hands on the red thong beneath it. Stepping into it, she wriggled the panties up her thighs and under her retied loincloth. And, as it was a thong, it did little to shield the orange-yellow handprint that Tutakura's friend had placed on her backside. 

"Maybe I'm tying this wrong..." Dani wondered allowed as she sat back down next to Benitez. 

"I'm sure it's fine," Benitez offered absentmindedly, glancing up the river. He was paying the girl no mind. In front of him was a large banana leaf, covered in some type of fresh fish and rice. As she fiddled with the knot at her hip, Dani leaned over and helped herself to Benitez's dinner. 

"Is it true?" Dani asked. She'd just quickly relayed the story Uturunku had told of Summer and the High Priestess of Sipusiki overthrowing Uru Kuchi and his mother. 

Benitez laughed heartily. "Yeah, Summer led a real insurrection," he offered sarcastically. He took another swig of beer, wiped his mouth, and explained. "This is years before me, but it's all wrapped up in the tall tales and mythology that the Huaca have for Summer.

"So she gets back from Hanan Pacha, the first place she'd ever done this little rite. And in less than twenty-four hours, she becomes the talk of the entire valley. Somehow. Somehow, a people with no telephones or proper writing and spread out over two departments manage to communicate gossip faster than any people on Earth. And so Summer's camp starts getting bombarded with requests, invitations to come perform the t'ojsiy at these little villages thoughout Huaca country -- Beni, Pando, Santa Cruz, and even into Brazil. And she's still a little freaked out about what she'd done in the first place, so naturally, she says "no." She just wants to get back to her work. 

"But they keep coming. And begging. And pleading. And Summer gets so guilt-ridden about their plight that she agrees to go with them -- just once more. She's already done it once, so really, how much more would they be asking of her? It's not as if anyone from back home will ever know what she was doing. And, you know, after working in a lab for long, and helping some god-awful pharmaceuticals company come up with the next beauty secret or face cream or breast enhancer or whatever, she's struck by the opportunity to have a real impact on the Huaca. If not for her, maybe the whole way of life disappears. 

"So if she's going to do what she's going to do just one more time, she decides that she better do it in Yapamantataq, which is more or less the capital of the Huaca world. Like, five days into the jungle, completely hidden from the Western world, plucked from way back in time -- you've got to see it some day, it's amazing. It's like an old Incan city, if the Conquistadors had never come. And so she goes to Yapamantataq, she meets the High Priestess and she meets this fat, fat 'king' -- Uru Kuchi. 

"Now, bear in mind, Summer has no idea the underlying history of the Sipusiki curse -- she just thinks that it's this self-propagating myth that needs to be extinguished for the Huaca's own good. And, of course, the revelations about Uru Kuchi not being Hatun Paka's son, and the poisoning and all else -- that didn't come out until afterwards, even if there were whispers among some of the elders. But Summer goes in, gets pushed to the limit in that way that only the Huaca can do to a volunteer, and then performs the t'ojsiy. Uru Kuchi gets so turned on, panting and clutching his chest and what-have-you, that he just drops dead."

"So Summer....?"

Benitez nodded. "Killed him with her orgasm." He chuckled a bit. "So Summer's freaked out, naturally, but the truth starts trickling out. Apasanka had cheated on Hatun Paka. Uru Kuchi was actually the son of Chimpilaku. Chimpilaku poisoned Hatun Paka. And so on and so on. The High Priestess hands the throne to Hatun Paka's next oldest son, Sipusiki's curse is lifted, and so on and so forth."

Dani let this all sink in. She was a bit worried about Benitez casually slipping in the part of about the Huaca pushing their volunteers; she sat there in nothing but a loincloth and her red thong, and could relate. But she was curious about something else. "Sipusiki's curse gets lifted? So then...what're we doing here?" 

"Tradition," the doctor answered. "The t'ojsiy used to be performed every year, as a part of the Phancha festival. Usually on an animal. Sometimes on one of the village girls. But then here's Summer. And she seems somehow blessed by Sipusiki. Like Sipusiki's possessing her, or Summer's channeling Sipusiki, or something. It's a bit mixed up."

A beat passed. Dani, scratching her forehead, asked, "Then why am I here? Why has she been trying to recruit other girls? Wouldn't she be only one able to perform the ritual?"

"Well, a ritual's a ritual, right? Summer gets inserted into the Huaca cosmology, and suddenly things get a bit more complicated. It's not as important to the Huaca that it's Summer, exactly. But just that it's not a Huaca. The only girl that Summer was ever able to get to actually do this, to actually get to perform the rite, was one of her graduate students back in La Paz, this girl from Montevideo. And yeah, there a few hoops to jump through at the beginning when she and Summer got to that first village, but...you know...it worked itself out."

"And she's the one who went native?" 

"Yeah," Benitez answered solemnly. "Never met her myself, so I can't really speak to it as well as Summer might be able to. But it wasn't anything nefarious or mind-controlling or anything like that. She was somewhere out by Porto Velho, and just decided to stay." Benitez looked out across the dancing Huaca. "It's not such a bad life. Simple. And getting treated like some sort of goddess on top of that? I can understand the temptation." 

There was too thin a line between goddess and sexual plaything for Dani, but she supposed that she could understand someone falling for this life. There were a few modern t-shirts and tools scattered about Aya Pampa, and Dani recalled a pick-up truck being mentioned in Summer's first story. But for the most part, Dani guessed that the Huaca were living as close a life to their pre-Spanish ancestors as possible. They weren't caught in some kind of bastardized half-life in the way that the Kwirku were. And while she hadn't talked to Benitez about the medical situation, and guessed that the abundance of fruit and food and liquor were in celebration of the Phancha that evening, she guessed that she, too, could understand the temptation. After all, hadn't she signed up for the Peace Corps, in part, to get away from the Western World for a while? 

The Argentine and the American were interrupted by one of the guides from earlier in the day. Qarachupa, Dani recalled. He greeted them both warmly, and joked with Dani -- through Benitez's translation -- about dancing the chimaychi and wearing the "chupika" paste on her body. Red panties aside, Dani herself had gone even more native than she'd intended. 

But Qarachupa introduced Dani and Benitez to his wife, Turuschu, and his two-year-old daughter, whom he'd named Chaqiska in honor of Summer. And then, a short while later, Dani met another little girl named Chaqiska. There was a ten-year-old named Hatun Chaqiska. A five-year-old named Tumpa Chaqiska. There was a Lunku Chaqiska. Even one of the little boys, less than a year old, was introduced to Dani and Benitez as Inti Chaqiska. And though Dani wondered at the wisdom of naming half the young girls in the village Chaqiska or some variant thereof, she was starting to fully understand the impact that Summer Monroe had made on these people's lives. Total degradation notwithstanding, maybe there was more to Summer's sacrifices to the Huaca. 

Could Dani actually go through with this? Could Dani actually do what Summer wanted her to? Less than twenty-four hours ago, she'd screamed and cried about even coming this far. Just that morning, she'd thrown a fit about what Summer and Benitez and Taksa Kuchu intended her to wear. And yet she found herself in the middle of Aya Pampa, laughing and singing and dancing with the Huaca people, surrounded by children whose parents were so thankful for what Summer had done for them that they'd been named in her honor. She was already in her underwear, and had exposed herself twice already to Benitez and the village as a whole -- and that didn't even include the girls down at the bathhouse. She'd already been "violated" by Tutakuru, having had the chief's niece run her hand up and down her pussy while being "washed." And, after all, wasn't Summer about to do something in front of these people that they'd seen dozens of times before? No matter how debased and vulgar Dani may have viewed the t'ojsiy, these people looked upon it less as a sexual rite and more as a religious rite. 

But this was all in the abstract. Dani would have liked to help the Huaca in any way she could...in the abstract. She might be willing to consider taking part in the t'ojsiy...in the abstract. The real world would prove to be far more real than she was willing to bear. 

"It's starting," Benitez announced, turning from his conversation with one of the village elders. 

Dani, who'd been standing beside him, pondering her own sexual will as the doctor jabbered on in the Huaca tongue, turned up river, as well. 

The drums had slowed, but continued to beat in an ominous, steady rhythm. The drinking, the talking, the laughter -- it had all come to an almost immediate halt. There was shouting somewhere up the river, a voice that Dani recognized as Qaray Puka's, the village's medicine man. 

When the crowd first parted, and Huaca carried Summer past, all Dani could think of was Jesus on the cross. For lack of a better term, that was more or less what Summer was splayed out on, completely naked, and held in place by leather binding at her wrists and ankles. It was a large, wooden "Y," built out of some sort of local wood, and it was being carried on the shoulders of a half dozen strong Aya Pampa men. Summer's wrists had been bound together, and tied above her head on one end -- the bottom of the Y -- while her legs had been spread, and secured far apart at each end of the top of the Y. Her pussy, shaven bare and glistening the torch light, was full exposed, her own crotch open at the crotch of the Y-frame. 

"Oh my god," was all Dani could utter. 

Dani had been painted with the chupika paste, but where Tutakuru had applied a simple, basic design, Summer had been covered in blues and reds and purples. She was very clearly naked, but her entire body painted in an ornate design, similar to those that the Huaca themselves had carved into their own skins. Her breasts heaved, each nipple as red as Dani's own, but encircled by blues and pinks that extended out from the areolae. There were square-little motifs that started at each hip and petered out, repeating designs of dots and lines and triangles. There was a lighting bolt on one thigh. There was a ray of sunlight on the inside of the other. And, around Summer's pussy, someone had painted diagonal lines, as if to guide the sacred dildo into its destination. 

The procession moved past them, and down river, but it was quickly evident that nowhere in Aya Pampa would be open enough to accommodate everyone. The Huaca clamored for a better view, but as much as they pushed and jostled each other, they were careful to allow Benitez, Taksa Kuchu, and Dani through. 

To look at her eyes, Summer was somewhere else. Or maybe she was more here than Dani was, more in the moment, more in the now. God knew what Summer had been doing these past few hours, while Dani was knocking back shots with Uturunku and feasting with the Huaca, but she looked like some sort of wild animal. She wasn't laying still, but rather heaving and panting on her the Y-frame, as if she were already in the throes of ecstasy. 

"Oh my god," Dani repeated, her lip quivering in horror. 

At Qaray Puka's instruction, the men came to a stop. They were each standing calf-deep in the trickling brook that ran through Aya Pampa. Upon orders from the medicine man, they began to tilt the Y-frame, so that Summer was head-down and pointed towards the little river, her legs open and pussy directed up into the air. They settled the top of the frame -- or bottom of it, given its current perspective -- into the water, so that Summer's fingertips, sticking up from where her wrists were bound, just disappeared beneath the surface. Two of the men continued to hold their ends of the Y-frame, the two men who had the two branches for each leg. The frame rests on their shoulders, and thus Summer came to a stop, positioned at a forty-five degree angle in relation to the ground. 

Though blood was sure to be rushing to her head, Summer complained not at all. It was impossible, Dani knew, but from her vantage point a few yards from the Y-frame, she swore that she could smell the other woman's pussy. Or, feeling a sensation between her legs, maybe it was her own. 

Uturunku made some sort of speech, but even if Dani had been able to understand what he was saying, she doubted she'd be able to pay him much attention. What Summer had described, what Benitez had told her that Summer had been doing in these little villages, what La Iniciativa expected Dani herself to do -- it had all been stories, it had had all been something that Dani hadn't even been able to relate. Five minutes ago, Dani had even been talking herself into taking part. 

Not now. 

"Is it always like this?" Dani stammered. 

Benitez grimaced, and answered, "Not always. Each village tends to have their own variation on the concept, but it's more or less the same." He paused. "But maybe we shouldn't have started you off with Aya Pampa." 

Uturunku's speech drew to a close, and the people of Aya Pampa began to chant. Again, Dani had no idea what they were saying, but there was a profoundly religious, powerful tone to it that seemed so distant from dildoing a woman off. But that was before Dani saw the dildo. 

It was long, but it was the girth that fascinated the brunette. Dani simply couldn't get over how fat the silver dildo looked. Summer would later tell her that Aya Pampa's particular "qollqephichilu" (literally, "silver penis") was nothing in terms of what she'd taken in other villages, but Dani simply had no concept of how anything could be bigger than what she was now looking at. It was less a sex toy than it was a small sword, complete with a hilt for Qaray Puka to hold on to. 

In her moment of shock and horror at seeing the qollqephichilu for the first time, Dani took an involuntary step back -- as if it would come to get her. As she did so, the knot at her hip slipped one more, and her loincloth began to slide down her hips again. Had she not been transfixed by the goings-on in front of her, Dani may have wondered if she'd traded away her black thong for a defective loincloth. She was wearing her red panties beneath, however, and absentmindedly grabbed the loincloth with her right hand, holding just tight enough in her balled fist to keep it from falling again. 




Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 03



Daniella D'Annunzio stood in the shower behind the Oveja Negra, scrubbing her backside with a combination of soap and black "taqsa" powder. Apparently the chupika paste that Dani had so readily accepted the night before was not quite as temporary as she had believed at the time. Blended with some sort of dried berry -- the "chupika," Taksa Kuchu had happily explained -- neither sweat, nor water, nor soap were enough to take the dye off of one's body. Instead, Dani needed the right combination of ashes, dried plant leaves, and crushed nut shells -- and soap, plenty of the Oveja Negra's rough, powdery soap -- to take the handprint of some strange woman off her ass. It was a frustrating ordeal, one made even harder by the fact that, while the Oveja Negra did have running water, it didn't happen to have warm running water. 

There were two showerheads in the outdoor shower behind the bar, and Dani -- as she had the previous morning -- dreaded the idea that either Summer or Taksa Kuchu were going to join her for a bath, something that seemed all too likely the happen the longer that Dani stayed in. This wasn't a single sex shower, either, so it wasn't at all impossible that Benitez himself might join her; after all, she'd spent the better part of the previous day with him completely topless, and he'd gotten a few quick peeks at her pussy on top of that. 

Benitez would probably be the least offensive of the three, gender aside. Unlike the two other women, Benitez seemed to understand what Dani was going through, seemed to understand her decision to get as far, far away form the Oriente as possible. He didn't agree with her, and seemed disappointed by her decision, but he understood it. After he'd picked her up off the ground in Aya Pampa last night, he'd led her back to his assigned hut for the evening, fetched her her red bra, and even given her one of his button-down shirts to cover herself with. He'd gone back out to Summer, Taksa Kuchu, and the party outside, but he'd checked back in on her every now and then, and put no pressure on her to come back out and join the celebrations. 

Taksa Kuchu, on the other hand, seemed annoyed with Dani, as if she'd wasted all her time in even getting to know her over the course of yesterday. She demanded a "why," out of Dani, and tried to argue her into playing Summer's role in some other Huaca village. And, after Benitez silenced her and told her to keep to herself, Taksa Kuchu huffed and puffed and acted angry around Dani the entire hike back to the Land Rover. Dani thought she could understand why -- Dani was rejecting the Huaca people as a whole, Taksa Kuchu's people. She refused to take part in a ritual that Taksa Kuchu would have easily volunteered for had it not required a non-Huaca girl. 

Summer was somewhere in between. She was hurt, and felt disappointed, and was particularly stung by Dani's suggestion that La Iniciativa just go hunt for a willing prostitute. She'd expected this to be hard, as it had been with nearly every other girl she'd contacted for La Iniciativa so far. But she'd convinced herself that if Dani would just visit the Huaca, get to know them, get to see their lifestyle, then maybe she'd feel the same tug at the heartstrings that Summer had felt herself so long ago. Summer wanted to talk to Dani -- if not to convince her to stay, then at the very least to make her understand why Summer had to keep taking part in the t'ojsiy. But Dani would have none of it -- making no eye contact with Summer as they awoke that morning, having nothing but cursory conversation with her on the trail, and avoiding her gaze in the Land Rover's mirrors. 

"Fuck it," Dani cursed, giving up the handprint. She wanted to get out of the shower before someone came knocking. She'd gotten the stripes off her front, and, more importantly, managed to scrub them off her face. The rough taqsa powder had been an absolute pleasure on the sensitive skin of her nipples, both of which still stung from having been rubbed raw. No one was going to see her bare ass anytime in the near future -- she could live with the handprint. Who's handprint was it anyway? She struggled to remember the names of the girls from the bathhouse. Kalli-Kalli? Miski Chupsi? Wapapa? She could picture the girl in her head, but she couldn't connect the image with a name. 

She closed her eyes, and recalled the sensation of the girl's hand, covering in the thick, sticky paste, touching her bare skin. She'd been naked -- her panties surrendered, her loincloth tossed aside -- in front of a good dozen or so teenage girls. This girl -- Taruka? -- had run her hands up and down Dani's body, fingertips touching her forcefully, and with purpose. Tutakuru's hand had glanced along the outside of her pussy while he was getting her "bath." And Dani had been wet. 

Dani had woken up that morning in Benitez's hut, finding herself alongside the sleeping Argentine doctor. For one quick moment, a discombobulated Dani D'Annunzio had wondered whether she'd slept with him the night before. She'd been drinking, after all. She was wearing one of his shirts. For an instant, Dani had thought about being with Benitez, and had wondered how he'd been in bed...before the course of the entire previous day had come flooding back. 

Maybe. Just maybe. Maybe it wouldn't be so bad if Benitez were to join her in the shower. She needed help getting the handprint off her ass. There could be worse things than seeing him as naked as he'd seen her yesterday. There could be worse things than having him see her naked one more time. There could be worse things that making love to someone as good looking as him in an outdoor shower. 

Dani was turned on. And, though she hated admitting it to herself, she'd been turned on all morning. She couldn't look at Summer without some combination of lust and disgust, without getting turned on by the memories of the previous evening and hating herself for it. What Summer had done last night -- what Summer had been doing all these years -- was depraved and perverted, and Dani hated Summer for what the very thought of it was doing to Dani herself. 

The brunette risked a glance outside the shower stall. No one was coming. And was she really going to do this?

She hated herself. 

But for some twisted reason, that self-loathing only made her hotter. 

Her nipples were still raw and sensitive from the taqsa powder, and they'd been at attention almost from the moment she'd stripped at Benitez's Land Rover the previous morning. As she touched them again now, for less utilitarian purposes (though perhaps utilitarian in its own way...), she gasped at just how sensitive they really were. A current of sexual stimulation shot through her body. 

She hesitated. 

What if someone were to come? What if Summer or Benitez or Taksa Kuchu were to discover what she was doing? The outdoor shower, while safely hidden behind the Oveja Negra, wasn't exactly a private place. 

She hesitated again. 

But...what if someone were to come? What if Summer or Benitez or Taksa Kuchu were to discover what she was doing? Would she stop? Would she be able to stop? Would any of them try to stop her? 

She was back in Aya Pampa, strapped to the Y-frame, as the silver dildo penetrated her again and again and again. It wasn't Qaray Puka who manned the sex toy, but rather Summer Monroe, as Benitez and Taksa Kuchu and the Huaca all watched. In and out. Back and forth. Up and down. Dani wasn't sure how much more she could take. 

She padded back over to the shower's door, opened it a small crack, and risked another glance out beyond. There was no latch, no lock. And, though she instinctually reached for the handle after finding the coast clear, to hold it shut on the inside, she pulled back. She turned her back, and under the cold stream of water emanated from the shower head, Dani began to touch herself. She glanced to the unguarded door once more, over her shoulder, but was quickly lost in her ministrations. 

Propping herself up against far wall with her left hand, Dani spread her legs just slightly and found her clit with her right. There was no time for foreplay, no time for slow, lingering touches -- and Dani didn't need any of that anyhow. She was wet. She was turned on. And it wouldn't take long for her cum. 

She was naked in the shower, dripping wet from head to toe. Her light-weight, ankle-length skirt hung over one of the shower's walls, on top of the simple tank top she'd worn out the swamps yesterday morning. Her red panties and matching red bra hung together on a half-banged-in nail turned makeshift coat hook under her bath towel. And yet, for some reason, Dani was still wearing the jaguar teeth and silver beaded necklace that Summer had given her at the Land Rover. It dangled around her neck, dripping water from the shower, as she leaned forward against the far wall of the shower. 

She thought she heard something. 

Was that someone behind her? 

Should she look? 

Should she turn around? 

Should she stop? 

Dani didn't stop. She didn't turn around. She didn't look. She didn't even hesitate in what she was doing. Her middle and ring finger were on her clit, rubbing back and forth, back and forth -- the same way Qaray Puka had done to Summer the night before. She moaned softly, thinking of the way she'd watched Summer be played with, the way that the crowd might have watched Dani be played with on the Y-frame. She thrust her hips against her hand, the same way Summer had bucked against the silver dildo. 

Was someone in the shower with her?

Was someone watching her touch herself? 

Was someone else getting off on the sight of her getting herself off? 

Dani didn't turn around. She didn't even slow down. She'd been on edge since yesterday afternoon, stewing in her own juices. She'd been topless -- topless! -- in front of so many people. She'd lost her loincloth at least three times -- effectively rendering her naked at least twice. And even when she'd been wearing it, the jaguar print design as if she were some sort of jungle princess, her pussy had been uncovered, casually exposed by the slightest movement. 

It was too much. Dani could feel the wave coming, and she let it wash over her. Her whole body quivered, her knees felt weak, and suddenly she needed the steadying effects of her left arm even more. She gasped for air, careful not to moan louder than the slower drip of the cold water against the cement. She shut her eyes. She bit her lip. And she rode her climax to its conclusion. 

And she hated herself for it. 

Slowly -- nervously -- Dani turned around inside the shower. She had sworn that she heard someone in the shower with her, but it had just been her imagination. There was no one in the shower with Dani, but the brunette hadn't quite closed the shower door all the way, and it had swung wide open. There was no one on the other side, nothing beyond the door but Bolivian jungle. 

And maybe it was the lingering effects of being so naked for so long yesterday, but the idea of being watched only made it hotter for Dani. The idea that he hated herself for what she was doing only made it hotter for Dani. The fact that she imagined herself as Summer, strapped to the Y-frame, only made it hotter for Dani. 

Dani shook her head and reached for the towel. 

***

The answer was still no. Dani wouldn't do it. She couldn't do it. As much as she might have fantasized about playing Summer's role, fantasies were different from reality. And the reality was that she was Dani D'Annunzio. She was from Vermont. She had a good college degree. She'd spent the last two years in the Peace Corps. She had a mother and a father and two little sisters at home. She had a life. And there was more to it than getting fucked by a bunch of Indians in rural Bolivia. 

Summer was already packing for the next village. She, Taksa Kuchu, and Benitez were on their way due south, to Manqus Wasi. It was a two-day trip from San Eduardo, mostly by boat, through jungles and swamps. And given that Summer was scheduled to hit any number of little villages that spring, La Iniciativa needed to be on its way that very evening. Benitez was reloading medical supplies into his bag, counting out vials and needles and bandages. Taksa Kuchu was grabbing gifts and supplies for Chief Suwaqara and his people at one of the little storefronts. The Land Rover was already mostly packed up, as the threesome planned on driving four hours down some rural road that night with a canoe on the roof, camping out, and setting out for Manqus Wasi the following morning. 

Dani had said her goodbyes, such as they were. It was awkward with Summer, and Taksa Kuchu couldn't have made her disdain for Dani's decision much clearer. Benitez was a bit better, but he quickly returned to his things, as if he'd already forgotten Dani had have come to visit them in the first place. Not that Dani really felt she deserved much more -- she'd only met these people last night, after all, and she'd shown nothing but disgust and disdain for the campaign all three of them had worked so hard on all these years. 

But it hurt her nonetheless. She felt that she'd made a connection with the babbling Taksa Kuchu. She liked Doctor Monroe on a personal level, and had found herself wanting her approval for some weird reason. And Benitez, well...in another life, another world, another time...she might have been attracted him. She might have found him smart, and good-looking, and calm, and funny. Even if she was just half his age, there had been a spark between them. He was doing something good in this world, doing something to make the lives of the Huaca people better, doing exactly what Dani had signed up for the Peace Corps to do, what she'd come all this way from Teguz to do here in Bolivia. 

She wanted him to like her. 

But La Iniciativa was busy. They were leaving tonight -- in only an hour or so. Dani, on the other hand, was having dinner alone at the bar inside the Oveja Negra. She'd be spending another night upstairs before catching one of the big yellow school buses headed back to Rurrenabaque. And then on to La Paz, New York, and little Cherryfield, Vermont. 

"Chaqiska! Chaqiska!"

Dani heard the shouting outside the bar, and assumed that someone had caught sight of Summer in the streets. But, glancing out the window from her stool, Dani saw that it was not Summer, but rather one of a hundreds of little girls running around the Oriente named in her honor. Her mother, carrying another little girl in her arms, chased after her, calling out her name. 

"Chaqiska! Chaqiska!" 

She was very clearly Huaca. Even in Dani's short time here in San Eduardo, she could tell. The Quechua, the Benianos, the mestizos -- they all had a certain "look" about them. The Huaca were clearly cut from a different cloth. They were tall, they were athletic-looking, they had striking Eastern features about them. This woman was dressed in a simple skirt and a tight-fitting top, but Dani imagined her topless, wearing nothing but a loincloth, and it seemed natural to her. 

The little girl dashed across the street, towards the Oveja Negra. But while San Eduardo may have been the capital of the Valle de los Reyes, it didn't have much in the way of motorized traffic, and the mother had little to worry about. Still, little Chaqiska seemed to be intent on getting away, and the mother looked like she was frazzled and had all she could handle in the other little girl in her arms. And so Dani, Paceña in hand, nodded at Chuy and, stepping outside the little bar, intercepted the runaway Huaca girl. 

"Rap-hi!" Dani said playfully, offering "hello" to little Chaqiska. 

The girl stopped running, mesmerized by the sight of the gringo in San Eduardo. No doubt her interaction with Americans - or anyone who looked like Dani, for that matter -- was fleeting. 

"Dani sutiymi," Dani offered, using up the last of the Huaca she'd learned yesterday afternoon. "Imataq sutiyaki?" 

The little girl giggled, and answered boldy, "Chaqiska sutiymi!" She then proceeded to launch into a question of her own, to which Dani could only offer a smile in response. 

Dani had succeeded in allowing the frazzled mother catch up with her daughter, however. Out of breath, but offering Dani a thankful "gracias," she latched onto Chaqiska's arm and scolded her in their native tongue. 

The little girl babbled back to her mother, and then pointing at Dani, instructed her, "Sutiyas 'Dani'!" 

"'Dani,'" the mother repeated, offering another smile in Summer's direction. Looking first at Chaqiska, and then back at Dani, the mother introduced heself as Quri Qinti. And then, gesturing at the little girl in her arms, said, "Sutiyas Qapila." 

"Qapila," Dani repeated, the name catching in her throat. She tried again. "Qapila." 

Dani was frozen. She was out of Huaca words and phrases, and now that introductions had been made, she had little else to offer. But something had snapped inside her, catching her unexpectedly. She thought back to all the little Chaqiskas that she'd met in Aya Pampa -- the Hatun Chaqiska, the Tumpa Chaqiska, the Lunku Chaqiska, and any number of other just plain Chaqiskas. She looked at this little girl here in front of her, this Chaqiska. And she started thinking about all the villages that stretched along the banks of the Rio de los Reyes from here to Brazil, about the Huaca people living in communities no larger that Aya Pampa, about a people whose entire way of life had been profoundly altered and made better by Summer Monroe. Whether the curse had been real or just a self-fulfilling prophecy, the Huaca had been on their way to extinction; an entire generation of Huaca owed their very lives to a blonde biologist barnstorming her way through the Oriente. "Chaqiska," the Huaca had named their children. "Chaqiska." 

"Qapila," Dani repeated one last time. 

Bottle of beer still in-hand, and dinner sitting back on the bar, Dani rounded the corner outside the Oveja Negra, and found Summer stacking blankets inside the back of the Land Rover. 

"I'll go," she offered excitedly to the blonde. "I'll go. I'll do it."

Summer was sure what to say. She stood in stunned silence for a moment, frozen in place, and asked, "Are you sure?" 

Dani paused. "No, not at all." But she was. Or, at least, she thought she was. "I don't know. I just...I need to do it. I have to do it. Something about it just...I don't know...feels...right." 

It was the truth. Dani wasn't sure about this. Not in the least. But she was going to go through with it anyway. 

For the Huaca. 

For the Chaqiskas. 

For Qapila. 

Really, what was it that she was sacrificing? A little dignity? A bit of chastity? Dani had masturbated in the shower when they'd gotten back to San Eduardo. And when it came right down to it, wasn't that all that Summer was asking of her? Wasn't that all that the Huaca were asking of her? Sure, there were more people there, more sets of eyes on her, and Dani herself wouldn't exactly be in charge. But it was more or less the same, wasn't it? She wasn't fucking anyone. The Huaca weren't raping her. She wasn't technically sleeping with anyone. 

It was whore-ish, sure. Dani wasn't planning on taking any pictures, or sharing the experience with anyone back home. But, in much the way that her loincloth and toplessness had fit into the accepted norm yesterday, this had become the accepted norm within La Iniciativa. If she could do this one, horrible thing -- and really, was it that horrible? -- then would be making the lives of the Huaca that much better. 

"Just once," she quickly amended the offer. "Just once. Let me try it once."

Benitez appeared from behind the bar, carrying his backpack and a pop-tent. Finding the two women together, and sensing something profound between them, he asked, "What's going on?"




Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 03



Summer was grinning from ear to ear, a smile that was infectious. 

Dani, too, was beaming. 

***

Sunlight streamed through the Land Rover's rear window, and Dani D'Annunzio blinked herself awake. She rolled over, took stock in her surroundings, and remembered where she was. 

Which was, for all intents and purposes, nowhere. 

The Land Rover was parked on the banks of the Rio Rosa, a tributary to the Rio de los Reyes for which the entire valley was named, which itself was a tributary to the Rio Beni (which, in turn, flowed into the Mamore, the Madeira, the Amazon, and eventually the Atlantic Ocean). They were quite literally at the end of the road, having bombed down well-worn dirt highways out of San Eduardo, and then less-maintained, narrow roads as the sun set, and then down twisting, muddy paths in the dark of night. Dani hadn't understood why they didn't just wait for the morning to leave, but Benitez had insisted that the best place to camp the following night was a full day's journey from where they'd put in. They'd be paddling upstream, but to hear Benitez describe it, the Rio Rosa sounded like a fairly lazy river without a terribly strong current, at least for much of their route. 

Benitez was still asleep in the front, his seat completely reclined. He was snoring, and Dani guessed that was what had woken her up. But she had to pee, and the fact that the sun was now coming up over the horizon meant they'd be getting up shortly anyways. She had folded the rear seat down, and had stretched out in the bed of the Land Rover -- feet towards the front, head towards the rear. The tent was packed away, neither Dani nor Benitez thinking it necessary while they still had the Land Rover, and neither having any interest in erecting when the reached the river late last night. 

Dani found the handle to the backseat door, and as quietly as possible, creaked it open and stepped out into the Bolivian jungle. They were surrounded on all sides by rain-forest, and even at dawn Dani could already feel the steam and heat of the day. She was wearing nothing more than a simple white tank-top and a pair of purple cotton bikini panties, but she padded barefoot out behind the car nonetheless. 

Dani had packed light. She had her swimsuit, as well as a light, little cover-up dress, for the canoe ride. She a pair of khaki shorts, a button-down short sleeve shirt, and a rain parka. And she had two extra pairs of panties -- none so sexy as the thongs she'd worn in Aya Pampa -- and two extra bras. The jeans she'd worn last night, as well as her bra, had been shed before going to sleep the night before. And she'd probably packed too much anyways -- it wasn't as if she'd be expected to wear her Sunday's best up in Manqus Wasi. 

Dani had debated whether her not she wanted to bring something to wear as pajamas while on the trip up to and then back from the little Indian village, but had decided against it. Benitez had already seen more of her than she'd intended, and he was on deck to see even more. The fact that she slept in the Land Rover with him in nothing more than a pair of panties and a t-shirt might have seemed scandalous forty-eight hours earlier, but Dani slipped out of her jeans the night before without much in the way of hand-wringing. 

Only a few feet from the Land Rover, Dani squatted and peed in the "road." She had little interest in encountering a greensnake or a howler monkey or even the little hyla benianis that Summer had come out to the Oriente to study in the first place. Besides, Benitez was still asleep, and Dani couldn't start to get self-conscious or embarrassed around him now -- not with what was coming. 

She'd been afraid that when she woke up that morning she'd be filled with self-doubt and second-guessing. But as Dani slid her panties back up her thighs, she found herself relatively confident and resolved to going through with this. She couldn't speak for just how confident she'd be as they got closer and closer to Manqus Wasi, but for the moment Dani was focused on the journey ahead of her rather than on the expectations she'd be forced to met in the Huaca village itself. 

Summer and Benitez had decided to send Dani to Manqus Wasi first. The Chief, Suwaqara, was an old friend and relatively casual about the stricter rites and rituals around the t'ojsiy itself. The village's priest, Qallu Qallu, was -- in Summer's words -- "gentle." And Manqus Wasi was a good two days' trip from San Eduardo, meaning that Summer could hit both Qola Warmi and Kasaraku nearby in the time that Dani performed the ritual in her assigned village. Taksa Kuchu and Chuy would go with the blonde woman, while Benitez would go with the brunette; he had skipped Manqus Wasi the previous year, and thus the little village was overdue for its public health session. 

Dani stood, closed her eyes, and gritted her teeth. 

She wasn't looking forward to this. 

She stepped back towards the car, and realized that this was a lie. 

She was, in fact, very much looking forward to this. 

She was a slut, pure and simple. That was the voice she kept hearing in her head. Her mother's voice. Her grandmother's voice. Her friends' voices. Her own voice. How could she not be, given what she'd agreed to do? It was the reason she'd gotten so wet in Aya Pampa, the reason she'd fantasized about being strung up on Summer's Y-frame in the river, the reason she'd masturbated in the shower out behind the Oveja Negra. She fingered Summer's necklace as she approached the Land Rover. 

But so what? What if she was a slut? How different did that make her from countless other women back in the States? There was a girl she'd trained with for the Peace Corps, who'd admitted to sleeping with twenty-one different men while in college. And Dani wasn't even doing that -- it was just a dildo she'd be fucking. How different did that make her from your run-of-the mill adult dancer? 

It was the same conversation she'd had with herself since the previous evening over and over. It was the same conversation she'd continue to have over the next few days. Justification. Explanation. Rationalization. Whatever the underlying reasons, Dani had butterflies in her stomach, a nervousness and fear mixed with a sense of excitement and adventure. She wanted to get the whole thing over with, but she also hoped that the canoe trip would last forever; she was terrified of playing the role of Summer in Manqus Wasi's t'ojsiy ceremony, but she also couldn't help but fantasize about it. 

Dani reached into the Land Rover, dug through her oversized purse-turned-travel bag, and fished out her black, one-piece swimming suit. Benitez still hadn't stirred, and so Dani didn't give a second thought to pulling her tank top over her head and slipping out of her panties. Still, she didn't linger in the nude, slipping into the swimsuit one leg at a time and pulling it up her body. She pulled the top up, and tied the straps behind her neck. 

While it was a one-piece, Dani's black swimsuit wasn't a particularly conservative one-piece. Low-cut in the front, and open in the back, the suit accentuated Dani's tall, athletic build while showing off a good amount of cleavage. She'd hardly worn the suit in Gracias a Dios, at least after she'd been victimized by teenage Kwirku boys who'd thought it was funny to try and pinch her ass while she was swimming. Here, in Bolivia, Dani knew she could dress as daring as she wanted and be warmly accepted by the Huaca. 

She pulled her cover-up out of her bag, a sunburst yellow cabana dress that was worn for modesty purposes to and from the beach. It showed off more leg than one of Dani's other dresses, but given that she'd spent the other day wearing nothing but a loincloth, Dani thought it would suffice for the trip to Manqus Wasi. She pulled it over her head, straightened it out, and then reached back into the Land Rover for her flip-flops. 

Dani glanced out at the Rio Rosa. It was tempting to go down and dip her feet in the water, or the start the hot, Bolivian day with a quick swim. But Dani didn't want to risk it without first asking Benitez if it was safe; she was no more a fan of piranhas in the river than she was of snakes in the jungle. 

Benitez was still slumbering peacefully, and Dani was hesitant to wake him up. Their drive, as they'd gotten closer and closer to the river, had been fairly stressful: poorly-marked and poorly-maintained dirt roads, puddles large enough to swallow the Land Rover whole, and overgrowth everywhere. They'd talked while Benitez drove, Dani sharing her own bucolic upbringing in Southern Vermont and Benitez talking about his own life in Argentina. He'd grown up in Córdoba, but moved to Buenos Aires for medical school, and ended up staying after he met his wife, Angelica ("Geli," he called her). She was a doctor, as well, and the two had been married for almost seven years, but Benitez explained that they had spent more time fighting than anything else. Thankfully, they never had children. After the divorce, he found himself wanting to some good somewhere in the world and wound up in rural Bolivia. The Huaca were fairly welcoming people, but it was only once he had hooked up with Summer that they allowed him to dispense medicine and inoculations, deliver babies and perform other public health duties. 

Summer. Dani thought back to the blonde woman. Strong, determined, and oozing sex appeal, she belonged in a 1950's T&A film, not hitching from one little Indian village to next in South America. Their parting had been rushed -- Benitez wanted to get on the road as quickly as possible -- but Summer had had enough time to offer her gratitude, a couple of her own memories, and her advice. In a hushed tone, she told Dani that it was alright if she enjoyed herself; she may not have understood it at that very moment, and may have only been heading up to Manqus Wasi reluctantly and out of guilt, but the reason Summer kept doing what she'd been doing for all these years was because sex had never been quite so good as performing the t'ojsiy. More practically, Summer gave the girl a gift, a dildo so large that Dani would have a difficult time hiding it from Benitez on the canoe trip up. But then, Dani guessed that Summer didn't intend for her to hide it from Benitez. It was large, not quite as large as the qollqephichilu that Summer had been engorged upon in Aya Pampa, but an intermediate step up for Dani to practice with. 

"What about...lube?" Dani had asked, embarrassed by the whole conversation. How was she going to keep Benitez from seeing it? How was she going to 'practice' while Benitez was around? 

Knowingly, Summer smiled. "Do you need lube?" 

She hadn't then, she doubted she would later, and she certainly didn't need any at that moment. Even standing in the jungle, fully dressed and more or less all alone, Dani was turned on and dripping wet. She fingered the necklace again as she looked at her reflection in the car window. All night, she'd had X-rated dreams, and the memory of them lingered somewhere at the back of Dani's mind as well as between her legs. She hadn't pulled her gift from her purse the night before -- it was too late, and she was too embarrassed anyways -- but Dani found herself contemplating a quick go now. She did have to practice, didn't she? 

Benitez stirred, and Dani knew she'd have to wait. 

***

The day was long, but relaxing. It was easy for Dani to forget where she was heading and why, surrounded by the sights and sounds of rainforest and accompanied by the charming, good-looking Argentine doctor. Benitez did most of the heavy paddling, but Dani was apparently a stronger paddler than he'd been expecting, and they made good time. Dani talked, Benitez pointed out wildlife, and they shared breakfast (and lunch, and snacks) requisitioned from San Eduardo and the Oveja Negra. The water was, in fact, safe to swim in -- at least, so long as they kept a look-out for alligators -- and cool, clear, and a refreshing break from the sweltering Bolivian heat. 

At lunch, during a lull in the conversation, Dani told Benitez about the dildo Summer had given her. She was reclined in the front of the canoe, propped up with her back against the Argentine's duffel bag, and facing backwards. She munched lazily on a cold empanada salteña as Benitez continued to paddle. 

The doctor, to his credit, didn't bat an eye. "Fairly sensible," he conceded, and offered her some time alone in the tent that night if she wanted. He'd been traveling with Summer for too long, Dani thought to herself -- this has all become normal and mundane to him. 

Dani nodded her head red-faced, taking Benitez up on his suggestion. "Sensible," she repeated to herself, and took another bite of her lunch. 

Wherever they were going, Benitez seemed to think they were making excellent time. Unlike the day before, when he'd rushed her into the Land Rover and sped off down the road to make the most of the lessening light of dusk, he was more relaxed and upbeat about their progress. He checked off indiscernible landmarks known only to him along the way, checking his watch every now and then to make sure that the canoe was on schedule to Manqus Wasi. 

Dani was in just her swimsuit as the sun began to drop toward the horizon. In fact, she'd been out of the cover-up for much of the afternoon, tucking it away once she'd decided it was easier than taking it off and putting it back on for her more and more frequent trips overboard and into the Rio Rosa. She'd scan the distance for caymans and alligators, look to Benitez for the thumbs-up, and slip over the side of the canoe and into the clear, clean water for a swim. She'd been back on board for the better part of an hour, and had no plans to put the dress back on, when the Argentine pointed out that they'd reached their destination

"We're here," he announced. 

"How can you tell?" Dani asked. 

Benitez grinned. "The spires." 

Dani didn't see anything. At least not at first. But then, in staring at the tree line directly in front of her, forms began to take shape. Walls. Windows. Doors. Scattered bricks. A crucifix. All overgrown by the jungle. It was a church. Or, rather, it had been a church once upon a time. The interior had been gutted, the roof had long since disappeared, and the difference between outside and inside was now a purely academic discussion. Strangler figs and vines covered most of the standing remains, and an assai palm grew up and through one of the open windows. 

"It's beautiful," Dani breathed. And it was, if partly in a spooky sort of way, catching the orange light of the sunset the way it did. 

"Santa Teresa," Benitez said. "The Spanish built it a long time ago." 

"How long ago?"

"Long, long ago."

"Is there a city, or a village, or people around here?" 

Benitez shrugged. "Not anymore." 

It was, according to the doctor, one of his favorite places in the Oriente, and one of the primary reasons he'd regretted not going with Summer to Manqus Wasi the previous year. Collapsed in parts, and standing in others. Overgrown here, but not over there. The church might not have compared to the finest Catholic cathedrals and missions that speckled the rest of the continent, but there was a beauty in the way the jungle had reclaimed the church for itself. 

They pulled their canoe up along the banks in front of the church, and began to unload their supplies. Benitez had his duffel bag, his back-pack, the tent, and a few boxes of medical supplies. Dani, meanwhile, had just her oversized handbag. And, reflecting on the fact that she'd spent the better part of the day in her swimsuit, and would probably do so again tomorrow, she began to regret bringing as much as she did. Dani shook her head at this thought -- she'd succumbed to the half-naked role of Summer Monroe more quickly than she'd expected to. 

"So this was just...here? Trying to convert who, exactly?" Dani asked. 

Benitez didn't know. "I imagine it was the Huaca. The only community anywhere near here now is Manqus Wasi." He pointed to a series of scratches in the stone wall, graffiti carved by an unknown artist. "Those are definitely Huaca designs, but there's no way for us to know if they were done ten decades ago or two centuries." 

The Huaca, like the Inca, had no formal writing system, no pictograms or glyphs like the Mayans to the north. But they had their own icons, their own designs, as Dani had witness painted on the canvas of Summer Monroe's white flesh. Here, in the remains of Santa Teresa, the Huaca had claimed the ruins as their own, the church literally covered in repeating patterns of Huaca hagiography. Over and over and over again, Dani saw a highly stylized Huaca sun, and -- causing a bit of a smirk on the brunette's face -- a similarly stylized open vagina. 

"The two most important symbols in Huaca myth," Benitez explained. "Western myth opens up with, 'Let there be light,' but the Huaca believed that the Earth, Sipusiki -- represented by the female genitalia -- was first. Only then did the 'inti," or sun, a god named Taytaku, begin to appear. He worshipped her from afar, passing high overhead each and every day, traveling across the sky. Finally, she 'opened' for him, welcoming him down, and the two copulated. And then from that union came all life -- the trees, the animals, the birds, the fish, and the first Huaca man and woman, Apucha and Hatucha."

Benitez made eye contact with Dani. "It's this union that the t'ojsiy represents. It's why Sipusiki's climax is so important to the Huaca people." 

Dani nodded. She'd be playing the role of Sipusiki. And Taytaku would be represented by an inanimate silver sex toy. That seemed to make sense. 

Benitez erected the pop-tent inside the former sanctuary of the former church, right smack in the middle of Santa Teresa's crumbling remains. He gathered some wood, and in little time had a small fire going outside the tent for them to heat their dinners over. It was still too warm to really need the warmth of the fire, and, in fact, Dani's skin was so hot and sticky that she contemplated going for another quick swim. It was like a perfect summer evening camping in New England, and only one thing could bring Dani back to the task at hand. 

"If you want some privacy," Benitez offered, "I can go for a walk?" 

Right. The dildo. The Huaca. The sex rite. The orgasming in front of a crowd. How could Dani have forgotten? 

She swallowed nervously. She didn't want to do this. No, that was a lie -- she didn't want Benitez to know that she was doing this. There was an attraction between them, a spark that Dani couldn't quite deny. She knew that she felt it -- she wondered if Benitez felt the same. Rather than a cold, hard dildo between her legs, Dani might have preferred taking the Argentine doctor by the hand and leading him to the tent. 

It had been months since Dani had been with a man. Come to think of it, it had been almost a year. Ten months ago, maybe eleven, she'd just happened to be in Puerto Lempira when a threesome of Australian back-packers had breezed through town. They were site-seeing and surfing and just meandering through Belize and Guatemala and Honduras. Dani joined them for drinks and -- oh God, it had been so long THAT time since she'd had sex back on a trip home back to Vermont -- one thing had led to another, and Dani had ended up wrapped around one of them in a cheap, weather-worn cabana on the beach. 

But Dani wasn't that girl. She'd never really been that girl; as much as she'd craved physical attention that night in Puerto Lempira, she never would have made the first move -- she had to thank her Aussie one-night stand for that. No matter how emboldened she felt by the nature of her mission to Manqus Wasi, she was simply incapable of doing what she wanted to do with Benitez. And so, meekly, she accepted his proposition. 




Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 03



"Okay," she said. 

Dani enjoyed her fire-warmed masaco de platano, but conversation slowed. Benitez, who'd been so casual about everything having to do with the Phancha and t'ojsiy to that point, seemed almost as unnerved as Dani herself. And the doctor's discomfort only amplified Dani's own. They made small talk, but after a day of free-flowing back-and-forth, the stunted stories and observations seemed forced. Both Dani and Benitez were focused on what Dani planned on doing that night. 

And so, once dinner was through, and Dani had knocked back three bottles of beer that had been allocated to her for the trip, she smiled weakly at Benitez, and disappeared into the tent. "Don't go far," she told the doctor. 

"I won't," he assured her. 

Zipping the tent shut, Dani realized they she'd have no way of knowing whether or not Benitez actually took the walk he'd promised her. Leaving aside the fact that they were on the Western edges of the Amazon Rainforest and Dani was a bit fearful of what or who might emerge from the jungles, she still hoped that he remained seated at the campfire; as utilitarian as this particular exercise was going to be, Dani was nonetheless excited by the Argentine's proximity. The thought of him turned on, erect, at the idea of her getting herself off in the tent...well...that only made Dani more turned on herself. She hoped that he could see her silhouette, peeling itself out of its swimsuit, flickering in the campfire light against the nylon walls. 

Dani extracted the dildo from her handbag. It was big -- that much Dani was certain of -- though not so big as the qolqephichilu Summer had been impaled upon in Aya Pampa. Dani shuddered at the thought of something so large between her legs. The dildo was plain and smooth, maybe a good foot in length and at least two, maybe two-and-half inches in diameter. It was silver, or at least covered in a layer of silver, giving the effect that it had been plucked from one of a naughtier display cases at Tiffany's (Dani pictured Summer giving it to her in a long, narrow, baby blue box). It was without packaging, which meant that it: a) was locally made, and b) had most likely been used previously. There was nothing that Dani could do about this latter point -- she doubted that Summer would have had a dildo laying about that she hadn't put to good use herself. And anyways, it seemed clean enough -- Dani's own fingerprints were all she saw on the dildo's polished surface. 

The brunette was naked inside the tent, her swimsuit kicked to one side. She lay back on the scratchy blankets Benitez had gathered for her back in San Eduardo, resting her head on one of the pillows he'd scrounged, no larger than those one might liberate from a commercial airline. She spread her legs, and then, with the silver toy in hand, slowly inserted it into her warm, wet, and welcoming pussy. 

The sensation was instantaneous, almost as if Dani's juices had a chemical reaction with the silver. She moaned softly, not quite loud enough to be heard over the crackling of the campfire outside, but enough to express just how deeply satisfied Dani felt at having something between her legs. She had no need for foreplay, no need to "warm herself up." The silver beads on the necklace Summer had given her - the necklace she hadn't taken off since two days earlier - brushed against the girl's bare skin, seeming to kiss it sexually and sensually. Her nipples stood straight out, just as they had been poking through the top of her swimsuit all day. Her pussy was wet -- dripping wet -- and she'd been forced to cross and re-cross her legs uncomfortably through dinner, her body knowing full well what pleasures awaited it for dessert. 

Clutching the hilt of the dildo in her right hand, Dani used the butt of her palm to rub against the top of her slit, grinding her clitoris as she plunged the toy into the folds of her sex. She arched her back in overwhelming pleasure, lifting her ass off the ground as she did so. She ran her hand through her hair with her left hand, playing with it, feeling her fingers slip through it. Her right wrist moved rapidly back and forth, playing with the dildo and her own clit at the same time, and built in both speed and force. 

She was sweating. Which, given that she had been in the tropical lowland rainforests of Eastern Bolivian for the better part of the past few days, was nothing new. But she was perspiring even more heavily that she had been earlier in the evening, her body's own temperature out of control, and the stuffy environment inside her little nylon bubble helping things not at all. She wished that she was back outside, back in the Bolivian night -- or, at the very least, that she'd left the door flap open for even the smallest of breezes. But, her skin moist and sticky, Dani heroically carried on. 

Breathing heavily, and gasping for air, the brunette squirmed and wriggled about on the rough, woolen blanket. She bit her lip, trying to keep herself from making too much noise. Which, all things considered, was ridiculous, given that Benitez, even if he was still within earshot, knew exactly what she was doing inside the tent. A low moan. A soulful exhalation. A soft, but high-pitched whine. Dani was lost in herself, lost in her movement of her right hand. 

Though no less turned on and excited than she'd been in the shower the previous afternoon, Dani found tonight's orgasm more elusive. The blanket was scratchy against her back. The heat was nearly overwhelming. Even the smell of Dani's own pussy soon permeated every cubic inch of the tent. But none of these were the problem, exactly; though she'd never used a dildo before, the toy was having the desired effects on her body. Despite the exquisite sensations her cunt was enjoying, and sharing with the rest of Dani's lower body, she found herself distracted, drawn outside the tent in thought, and chasing after a climax that was just out of reach. 

Dani would spare no effort, however. It had been a long time since she'd been bedded by the Australian back-packer, and it had been a longtime before that since she'd gone home with one her high school classmates that she'd run into back in Cherryfield. Neither partner had been particularly poorly endowed, but neither possessed the length or the girth of the little, silver lover she now found herself with. For that matter, Dani might have had to go all the way back to Chris Duse -- to whom she'd lost her virginity to in Weinstein Hall -- to remember a time she'd felt so full, so totally engorged. She continued to jackhammer away at her pussy, forcing the silver dildo in and out of her still-dripping slit. 

She wondered where Benitez was. It had to have been ten, fifteen minutes since she'd first entered the tent. If he'd left her alone, as he'd promised, there was a good possibility that he'd already returned. She whined again. Was he back? Was he seated at the campfire? Was he listening to her soft mews, listening to her whimpers? 

The very thought of the Argentine doctor took Dani to the next level, and her strokes became longer, stronger, deeper, and more forceful. She closed her eyes tightly, and pursed her lips, panting and gasping for air all the while. Her whole body was covered in a sheen of perspiration, and Dani might have been slipping and sliding in a puddle of her own sweat if she had been lying on the bare nylon floor. She arched her back again, lifting her buttocks in the air -- the same buttocks which were still adorned with the yellow-orange handprint from a teenage girl in Aya Pampa whose name Dani couldn't remember. She bit her lower lip, doing her best to hold in a deep-seated primal squeal. But this was the jungle, after all, and Dani had become some sort of wild animal, and she proved to be incapable of holding back as a massive orgasm wrapped itself around her very soul. It started in her clit, as her climaxes had the entire course of her life, a dull, pulsation giving way to more noticeable throbbing, which itself exploded outward and sent sparks of sexual release shooting through her body. Her pussy tightened around the dildo, squeezing her silver lover in a vain attempt to extract its cum. It felt as if electricity crackled between her thighs, as if her very insides had been laced with some sort of drug that slipped into her bloodstream through her pussy, as if the depths of her sex were on her fire. She called out, offering nothing but gibberish and a high-pitched series of uncontrollable yelps. She screamed loudly at her release, cumming fast and cumming hard, like a quick descent from a roller coaster's highest peak. 

No matter how far Benitez had wandered from Santa Teresa, there was little doubt that he'd heard her exultations, little doubt that he was now fully aware of her rapture. 

Dani had a difficult time remembering an orgasm so intense or fulfilling. She was drenched through and through, inside and out; her hands, her thighs, and the dildo covered in pussy juice, her hair and skin soaked in sweat. The smell of sex hung in the air inside the tent, and a horrified, red-faced Dani D'Annunzio knew full well that she'd have to air it out before allowing Benitez to come in for the night. The girl extracted the dildo and sat up, crossing her legs Indian-style. She ran her hands through her sweaty hair, and wiped perspiration from her forehead and beneath her eyes. Her naked chest continued to heave up and down, gasping for air after the most intense cardiovascular workout Dani had put herself through in weeks. Her nipples were still at attention and rock hard -- adamantine -- and her body flush from the orgasm. 

Dani gathered her long, flowing brown hair into a ponytail, and then weakly slipped one rubber-kneed leg at a time back into her black bathing suit. As she got to her feet, hunched over, and pulled the cups up over her breasts, she found that she could hardly stand. Instead of tying the swimsuit's straps behind her neck, which seemed like it would require a reserve of energy that Dani just didn't have at that point, the girl decided to just hold the top in place with her right hand. She bent over and slipped the warm, slimy dildo beneath her blanket, making a mental note to stash it away that night before Benitez came across it. She unzipped the tent's front flap, and exited into the night. 

Benitez was not tending to the fire, and was, in fact, nowhere to be seen. Mostly relieved, but at least partly disappointed, Dani padded barefoot through the crumbling remains of the Spanish church and down to the river's edge. The canoe was exactly where they'd left it, the supplies mostly still in tact between the two seats. Though it was dark, and perhaps dangerous, Dani desperately wanted to go for a swim. She was hot, overheated even, and the warm, jungle air offered her no respite. Benitez had told her earlier that evening that he'd never seen an alligator or a cayman along this particular stretch of the Rio Rosa, and Dani decided that, given her current state, that was reassurance enough for her. But, mischief twinkling in her eye, and her swimsuit not entirely all in place, Dani glanced nervously over her shoulder and slipped out of the black, nylon/spandex blend suit, dropping it into the canoe and stepping carefully into the river. 

She was being needlessly naughty, she knew, but forgive her if she should be feeling over-sexualized at that particular moment. She rationalized the action by telling herself that the suit was dry, and that there was no need to get it wet; that she just wanted to feel the cool, calm waters of the Rio Rosa against her bare skin. And maybe, just maybe, she hoped that Benitez might join her for a quick skinny-dip beneath the waning crescent moon.



Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 04



Dani D'Annunzio wiped sweat from her brow as she plunged her paddle deeper and more forcefully into the water. Her muscles ached, and even though she knew full well that Benitez was doing most of the work behind her, she was contributing all she could at the front of the canoe. She longed for another quick dip in the Rio Rosa. She longed for a break in the paddling. She longed for Benitez to turn the canoe towards the river's edge to her left. 

While their first day in the canoe had been slow and lazy, today's trek had been nothing of the sort. The morning started slowly enough, Dani and the doctor digging just slightly deeper into the water as they fought an increasing current up-river. But by mid-day, the current had gotten so strong that the American girl wondered if they were making any progress whatsoever. At one point, just after lunch, they'd been forced to unload the canoe and make a number up trips along the river's edge by foot, carrying their supplies past a powerful series of cataracts that they'd encountered. Dani feared, hearing the roar of rushing water and seeing the crash of the Rio Rosa against the rocks in front of her, that they'd be forced to do so again. 

"It's beautiful," she nonetheless remarked, allowing herself a moment to take in the waterfall. It stood six, maybe seven stories tall, and was a good three hundred feet across, with the tip of an island splitting the falls into two. Mist rose from where the water cascaded down into the river below, froth and bubbles everywhere. It seemed impossible that the outside world wouldn't know of this waterfall, wouldn't be sending wave after wave of tourists to photograph it. 

"Qaqaqa Qan," Benitez nodded. Translating, he explained, "'Thunder.'" 

"Are we going around?" 

The Argentine answered in the affirmative. "Manqus Wasi is up there," he announced, pointing at the island between the two halves of Qaqaqa Qan. 

Dani swallowed hard. They were here. 

Benitez grimaced. "Our escort is here waiting for us." 

Dani didn't see anyone. She searched the horizon, looking for any sign of life. It was growing dark, and the girl had difficulty seeing too deeply into the jungle. 

"They're hiding," the doctor explained. "They're watching us."

The brunette wasn't entirely comfortable with unseen eyes watching her every move. Why didn't they just show themselves? Why weren't Dani and Benitez greeted with the same jubilation and excitement that Summer had received in Aya Pampa? Why weren't they making themselves known?

"I'm not sure," Benitez answered after Dani had voiced her concerns aloud. "Maybe it's just that they're expecting a blonde." 

Dani was back in the bright yellow cover-up dress, with her black swimsuit underneath. She'd slept just inches from Benitez back in the tent at Santa Teresa in nothing more than the purple panties and white tank she'd worn to bed the night before. The smell of sex had hung in the air, Dani's whole body alive with lust and longing, but she'd denied her baser impulses and kept her back to the doctor. She'd been in the cover-up all day - aside from a couple of quick swims in the river - as she'd worried about losing herself to her current adventure, succumbing to the urges she felt around Benitez. The little yellow dress, by no means conservative in nature, nonetheless offered another layer of defense between Dani and the doctor. 

As they pulled the canoe onto the banks of the Rio Rosa, Dani still didn't see any of the Huaca that Benitez had noticed. The sun had dipped below the horizon, but the sky was still alight with a purplish-blue hue. Dani scanned the trees, looking for any sign of life. If the villagers of Manqus Wasi were out there, they were better disguised and hidden than Dani was capable of seeing. 

"Rap-hi!" Benitez shouted into the darkened jungle. "Rap-hi!" He followed his hellos with a few phrases shouted out in Huaca. Dani caught only one word -- "Chaqiska." 

"The village is up there?" Dani asked, looking towards Qaqaqa Qan. "Why don't we just start walking?" 

Benitez was distracted, still staring out into the jungle. "It's above the falls," he answered absentmindedly. "We'll be escorted there by our guides, once they show themselves." 

Dani clutched herself tight. The reality of what was about to transpire had begun to seem more and more real. It was one thing to volunteer back in San Eduardo, inspired by an unthreatening little girl named Qapila and perhaps being a bit too cavalier about the prospects of erotic adventure. It was quite another to be here, in the Bolivian yungas, waiting for a little-known backwater Indian tribe to emerge from the jungle and fuck her as a flesh sacrifice. 

But emerge they did, and in numbers that frightened Dani and seemed to surprise Benitez. One by one, then two by two, and then four by four, the Huaca stepped into the waning twilight. They'd been perfectly still in the jungle, and even now, it was difficult for Dani to pick them out individually against the dark backdrop. But they came en masse, maybe forty of fifty of them, dressed and adorned in the same fashion as Achaku, Qarachupa, Rukuku, and the rest of Qaray Puka's men three days earlier -- loincloths, ritualistic scarring, and piercings here, there, and everywhere. But unlike the friendly Medicine Man from Aya Pampa, these men did not seem pleased to see the American and the Argentine, and Dani couldn't help but notice that they were all armed. Bows and arrows, menacing-looking spears, and hunting knives at the ready, the Huaca did not seem to be rejoicing at the sight of their brunette savior. 

Benitez reached out to Dani, shielding her with his left arm, and pulling her behind him. This only made the girl more frightened, knowing now that Benitez was as ill-at-ease as Dani herself. 

The doctor cleared his throat, and offered something to the approaching Huaca in their own tongue. Again, "Chaqiska," was the only word that Dani recognized, and she hoped that Summer's reputation would keep her safe. One of the Huaca, indistinguishable from any of the others, shouted back at Benitez, seeming angry and confused. Benitez answered, and he was answered back, and it carried on like this for a few minutes, Dani standing behind the Argentine and offering nothing at all. 

And then, without warning, the Huaca were on top of them. 

The attack came so quickly that Benitez had no time to shout anything to Dani, that Dani herself had had no time to even scream. Dani was grabbed roughly by the hair by a man rushing up behind her, while another grabbed at her chin and held her mouth open. A large, rough, piece of wood was inserted, and Dani gagged at the size of it between her teeth. In one quick motion, a hunting knife had sliced through the thin yellow material of her cover-up. And when the Huaca discovered her black swimsuit beneath, that, too, was sliced apart. Hands were all over her, grabbing at the material, tearing it from her body. In an instant, Dani was naked in front of an entire tribe of men, her breasts out in the open, her pussy full exposed. She tried to cry out, but found her screams muffled by the gag in her mouth. 

This was how her adventure was to end. Instead of being sacrificed on an altar, Dani would be raped and gang-banged in the jungle. 

But the men, once Dani had been stripped of everything but Summer's necklace and the simple braided sapumpa ferns around her neck, made no sexual advances. She wasn't groped, she wasn't fondled, she wasn't violated in any additional way. Instead, she was bound at the wrists and ankles, and laid on the muddy earth at their feet. 

Benitez was faring little better. He, too, had been stripped to the skin and gagged. He, too, had been bound and laid in the dirt. He was limp, however, and had his back to Dani, the girl being denied any sort of reassuring eye contact, any sense that she'd be okay. But, even at a time like this, when Dani was terrified and dreading what might come next, there was a part of her that couldn't help but take in the doctor's naked backside, that wondered what it might be like to be on the receiving end of strong, thrusting buttocks like Benitez's. There was a part of her that was disappointed that she wasn't able to see him, full-frontal. There was a part of her that was disappointed that she hadn't been bound, gagged, and taken by Benitez himself. 

Everything that they had brought with them was ransacked, taken apart and examined on the edge of the river. Dani watched as her swimsuit and yellow dress -- or what was left of them, anyways -- were tossed carelessly into the Rio Rosa, the current taking them downstream. Her white tank-top, her button-down short-sleeve shirt, her khaki shorts, and her jeans were all examined, but when the half-dressed Huaca found no use for them, they were tossed into the river, as well. Her bras and underwear, on the other hand -- including the purple cotton panties she'd worn to bed the past two nights, which received an appreciate sniff and a disgusting grin from one of the Huaca men -- were divvied up and distributed among the Huaca, as were her flip-flops, the espadrilles, and the jaguar-print loincloth she'd been given in Aya Pampa. 

The hooting began when one of the Huaca found the silver dildo in Dani's bag, the men finding it hysterical to come across such an intimate toy among their captives' personal items. This, too, was examined with a quick sniff and a wrinkled nose, and the toy was passed among the Huaca so that everyone, it seemed, could have a turn holding the dildo that had been inside Daniella D'Annunzio the night before. 

Dani's eyes were wide in horror and shame, and it seemed that one of the Huaca took exception to the fact that they were now being watched. Instead of being knocked unconscious, as Benitez surely had, Dani found herself being blindfolded, a strip of a leather being tied around her head, and blocking out what little remained of the dusk's light. 

The world was black to Dani. She was denied sight, and was forced to rely on her other senses. She could smell the Huaca men around her -- strong, masculine, and musky. She could taste their sweat in the air. The could hear them uttering quick instructions and sharing observations in their native tongue, barking at one another and laughing about the captives they'd taken. And she could feel them, grabbing at her forearms and calves, securing her to the underside of some sort of spit. 

She was hefted into the air, dangling beneath of long pole of some sort -- A tree branch? One of the spears? -- with her ankles and wrists fastened securely to either end. She imagined herself being carried by two men, one at either end, and bouncing and swaying as they began their hike through the woods to Manqus Wasi. The bindings burned against her skin, her muscles aching already at the weight they were holding. 

Four thousand miles away, Dani's parents might have been sitting down to dinner with her baby sister Michelle. They'd talk about their day, Dani's father offering gruffly about what it had been like down at the garage, her sister Michelle offering the latest goings-on at Cherryfield High. Dani's mother would remark on a phone call she'd received from Dani's middle sister, Valerie, who was studying at Vermont State, or a postcard she'd received from Dani herself, who was off to work on a public health program in Bolivia. She might have said she missed them both, and that whatever they were doing at that very moment, that they were safe, and that they were having fun. 

Dani began to cry. Her tears ran into the leather blindfold, however, and her sobs were muffled by the gag between her teeth. Her mouth ached, her lips stretched further apart than was comfortable. She felt her hair drag along the ground every now and then -- though the Huaca men were tall, Dani's hair was long, and it brushed against the trail and the undergrowth along it. Her tits bounced in all directions, the choppy path and the up-and-down motion of her porters causing them to move independently of one another, carried whereever gravity took them. And, though her legs were bound together, Dani could feel how wet and excited she'd become.. 

And she cried that much harder. 

The ride beneath the spit could have been five minutes long or an hour and five minutes long; for Dani, it seemed like an eternity. She had to pee. She wanted to touch herself. She wanted to massage her wrists and ankles. She wanted to massage her pussy. Her head ached, her breasts ached, her crotch ached, her joints ached. The only comfort that she took in being carried into Manqus Wasi, however, was that whatever waited for her there, whatever the Huaca were planning on doing to her, it wouldn't happen until the end of this little hike. And so, despite her aches and pains and longings, Dani hoped the hike would never end. 

She listened. She heard the roar of a waterfall somewhere to her right. She heard the crackle of torches being lit. She heard the Huaca talking among themselves. She heard bare feet padding along a dirt path. And she again heard the rush of water, knowing that they were somewhere upstream, somewhere beyond the waterfall. 

She was loaded into another canoe, this one shallow and poorly-made. For a few, brief minutes, Dani found relief from being hung upside down underneath the spit, being laid on a damp and roughly-carved wooden bottom. But the trip was short -- thankfully so, given that she could hear the crash and thunder of Qaqaqa Qan somewhere downriver, and feared that the Huaca might be carried over the falls with their prizes. She was hefted back onto her porters' shoulders once they'd reached the shores of Manqus Wasi itself, and even over the roar of the waterfall, Dani could hear the roar of an appreciative village. 

She had no way of knowing for sure, but already Dani had the sense that Manqus Wasi would dwarf Aya Pampa. There seemed to be people everywhere, laughing and talking and shouting and screaming out in joy. They seemed to be pressing around her, and she could feel their hot, collective breath upon her skin. There were familiar smells - of dried meat and fish, of carambola juice and chicha qullisara, of human perspiration and human flesh. After having the Rio Rosa to just herself and Benitez the past two days, Dani now felt crowded and claustrophobic. 

She was carried through the center of the village, or so she believed, across the little island between the falls that made up Manqus Wasi. The canoe that had taken her across the river was on the far end of the island, and Dani judged just how far she'd come by the increasing volume of the Qaqaqa Qan in front of her. Slowly but surely, the voices of the Huaca crowd were drowned out by the thunderous cacophony of the Rio Rosa spilling over the cliff-face, and the hot, sticky jungle air was replaced by a cooling mist of rising water vapor. As they drew closer to the northern end of Manqus Wasi, Dani began to grow concerned that she'd been brought all this way to be tossed into the churning waterfall below, that she'd be a sacrifice not to Sipusiki, but to Qaqaqa Qan. 

But Dani, instead, was laid upon a cool, hard, volcanic rock just above the falls, the clamor of Qaqaqa Qan reverberating right through her very being. She was given instructions, in Huaca, as the bindings on her wrists and ankles were loosened, but as she had little understanding of the language beyond saying "hello" and introducing herself -- neither of which the Huaca seemed all that concerned with at the moment -- she simply went limp, and numbly allowed herself to be pushed around and positioned by her captors. Her arms were raised over her head and stretched apart, and her legs kicked outward like she was performing some sort of grotesque, nude jumping jack. Her wrists and ankles were bound once more, though this time not to each other. Instead, she was held in place by rough, scratchy rope, her body splayed apart like an X. And, once the Huaca had established that she was securely fashioned in place, her gag and her blindfold were removed, and she was no longer in the dark. 

A small sliver of a waning moon hung overhead, and Dani knew that tomorrow would be pitch black. Tonight, at least, the village of Manqus Wasi was lit with starlight, torchlight, and at least some remaining moonlight. And for the first time, Dani saw the people whom she'd intended on sacrificing herself for. 

There were, indeed, more Indians here than there had been in Aya Pampa, but the setting was no less cramped and crowded. Manqus Wasi was not a bucolic little village in the way that Summer had described Hanan Pacha on her first experience with the Huaca. Nor was it the quirky ravine town that Aya Pampa had been. No, Manqus Wasi was nothing short of a city. Huts and houses were scattered everywhere, almost literally right on top of one another. There were trees and bushes still standing on the island, but they were fenced in and surrounded by Huaca homes. All were built from rocks and mud and sticks and leaves, but despite the impermanence of them all, some were clearly newer than others -- green leaves instead of brown, freshly cut tree branch walls instead of faded, weathered exteriors. 

And people. People for as far as the eye could see. Jam-packed so closely together that all Dani could think of was Grand Central during morning rush hour, the Huaca stood shoulder to shoulder, looking up at the brunette girl bound before them. They were young and they were old, and they were all dressed in mostly traditional Huaca garb, aside from the fact that the only exposed breasts that Dani could see were her own. Men and women both wore loincloths long and short, but Dani was hard-pressed to find a woman not wearing a skin-wrap around her chest, or some type of native bikini top, or something similar. Dani was quite alone in her nudity. 

But not completely alone. To her left, Gabriel Benitez Serrano had been similarly stripped, bound, blindfolded, and secured by his arms and legs to a pair of trees that stood defiantly at the edge of Manqus Wasi. Dani's left wrist and left ankle had been roped to the same tree as Benitez's right wrist and right ankle. And, had there been a third member of their party, that individual would have been arranged between two trees to Dani's right -- four trees and three gaps, enough to display three prisoners to the village -- city? -- of Manqus Wasi. Their buttocks faced off the cliff, and Dani could feel the sensation of mist from Qaqaqa Qan cooling her lower body. Their fronts, completely exposed, faced Manqus Wasi and the crowds that had gathered to stare up at them. 

Perhaps it was a treatment reserved for women, or perhaps Benitez's lack of consciousness had made it unnecessary, but the doctor hadn't been gagged. He moaned, and then coughed, the gentle spray of Qaqaqa Qan seeming to bring him back to life. Dani looked to him for guidance, looked to him for explanation, and looked to him to see if he was all right. But even held captive like she was, even as scared and horrified about what would befall her that night, Dani couldn't help but glance at the doctor's body. 

He was well-built -- that much Dani had been sure of even before she'd seen him undressed. Slender, but not necessarily skinny, Benitez had a build like some sort of professional South American soccer player. He was muscular, with biceps, triceps, and pectorals accentuated by the way he'd been hung between the two trees, and possessed a set of six-pack abs that would later have Dani wondering where he got his work-outs in way out here in the Oriente. But it was Benitez's cock that Dani had fantasized about for most of that day, a lifetime ago in the canoe on the Rio Rosa, and it was Benitez's cock that now held Dani transfixed. It was big. Even flaccid, Dani could see that Benitez was well-hung. More than the Australian backpacker, or her Cherryfield schoolmate, or the Peace Corps volunteer from Texas she'd fucked during training, Benitez had a gift. And maybe, just maybe, it was Benitez's "talent" that had attracted Summer Monroe to him in the first place. Maybe, just maybe, there was more to the relationship between Benitez and Summer than the pair had let on. 




Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 04



"Where are we?" Benitez asked groggily, blinking himself awake. He seemed to be having difficulty seeing. 

"Manqus Wasi," Dani answered, concerned for the doctor's health. "With the Huaca." 

"No," Benitez croaked. "Too many people for Manqus Wasi." 

Dani shook her head. No. No. No, this had to Manqus Wasi. They were on the Rio Rosa. They were between the falls. They were in Manqus Wasi. They had to be. Or else Dani were in even bigger trouble than she'd first thought. 

"No, you're right. It is Manqus Wasi," Benitez corrected himself, eliciting a sigh of relief from the brunette. "Qaqaqa Qan. The island." He squinted out into the crowd. "But there are way too many people here. The whole village has grown." 

Dani was less interested in a census than she was in her immediate well-being. 

"It's not the worst reception I've received in a Huaca village," Benitez tried to calm the girl after she'd voiced her fears. He shot her a wry smile. But then he spat blood, and scowled. "But there's definitely something wrong here." 

Benitez again surveyed the crowd. Gathering his strength, he called out, "Suwaqara! Suwaqara!" He beckoned for the chief. Not getting an immediate response, he barked out for the village's medicine man. "Qallu Qallu!" 

There was a momentary pause, before a strong, male voice shouted from the crowd. "Qallu Qallu wanyusqa!" 

This obviously concerned Benitez. He yelled out in the direction of the voice. "Suwaqara!"

Again, the male voice barked back, "Suwaqara wanyusqa!" 

"What's happening?" Dani asked. 

Benitez frowned. His brow was furrowed, and he was quite obviously getting a bit more worried. He smiled at Dani, though, choosing to ignore her question, as if he were telling her to "buck up," that he'd handle this. 

"Gabriel!" Dani cried. "Gabriel, what's going on?" 

Benitez bit his lip. "I don't know." He hesitated for a moment, as if trying to decide whether or not to let Dani in on what he'd just learned. "Suwaqara is dead. Qallu Qallu, too." 

Dani felt a shiver go up and down her spine. 

"So what does that mean?" 

Benitez shook his head. Even if he knew, he had no time to explain. The strong, male voice belonged to a strong, male figure, who emerged from the crowd and stepped up to where Dani and Benitez had been bound naked on the cliff-face. He was tall, even for a Huaca, standing a good head taller than Dani herself. He had dark skin, with a series of ritual burns and scars traced into it, symmetrically, on either side of his body. A strong jaw and a thin, slight beard framed his face, which was otherwise adorned with lip, nose, and eyebrow piercings. A single necklace dangled on his chest, the skull of some sort of small animal having been turned into this man's jewelry. In addition, he wore a long, flowing brown loincloth, and a pair of sandals that seemed almost out of place among the barefooted masses. 

"Kuchaq sutiymi," the dark-skinned man introduced himself to Benitez, not even bothering to address the naked brunette. 

Benitez glanced at Dani, and then launched into his Huaca. Kuchaq listened intently, and then answered Benitez in turn. Benitez asked about Suwaqara and Qallu Qallu, Dani was sure of that much. And Kuchaq pressed the doctor of Chaqiska, looking at Dani herself disapprovingly. Benitez seemed confused, and then it was Kuchaq's turn to seem confused -- all of which was taken in by Dani, who had not the slightest of clue what was being shared between the two men. She stared off into the crowd, doing her best to forget how naked and exposed she was at that moment. 

Kuchaq reached for the knife at his belt, and Dani was sure the worst had come. But, though his tone had softened and his disapproval hadn't waned, the dark-skinned man reached up and cut the Argentine doctor from his bindings. Right wrist, right ankle. Left ankle, left wrist. Benitez was being freed. 

The same could not be said of the brunette. She was left where she was bound, neither Kuchaq nor the doctor making any moves towards loosening her bindings. 

"I need to go talk to the chieftainess," Benitez explained, rubbing his wrists. To look at him from the front, Dani could now see a good-sized bump on her traveling companion's forehead where he'd sustained a blow. 

Kuchaq was obviously displeased with the porters who'd carried Benitez into town, slapping at one of them angrily. He paid little attention to Dani, however, and it was apparent that no similar anger who be directed at treating the woman the same way. 

"What's happening?" Dani asked, doing her best to maintain eye contact with the doctor. He, on the other hand, seemed to be casually taking in her body -- not in a wanton, sexual way, but more absentmindedly, as if he were trying to think straight while looking at her tits. 

"The chief is dead," he explained. "Suwaqara. The village priest, too. It's been Suwaqara's daughter, Sacha Allqu, who is serving as chief and medicine man both -- priestess and chieftainess all in one." 

"Dead? How did they die?"

Benitez shrugged. "Some sort of disease. Yellow fever? Hep A? Food poisoning? I don't know what -- it's a good thing we're here." The doctor scratched his chin, as nonchalantly as if he were fully dressed and not standing in front of an enormous crowd. "It's sounds like some of the newcomers brought it with them."

"Newcomers?"

"From other villages," Benitez answered. "There's an American mining company to the south of here -- Knox Industries. They've been all over this part of the country for years now, not long after Summer first came down, mining for Huaca silver." He looked at Dani, and only seemed to just register that she was completely in the nude, aside from her jewelry. He gestured to her chest, and said, "Like your necklace. It's some sort of special alloy. But it sounds like they've been displacing some of the smaller Huaca villages, and they've been flooding in here, downriver, to Manqus Wasi. And, apparently, some of them have been showing up sick." 

"What does that mean for us?" Dani asked. 

Benitez looked at Kuchaq, and then out into Manqus Wasi, and then back to Dani. "I don't know," he admitted. "But I'm going to go find out."

"Cut me down," Dani pleaded. "Cut me down."

Benitez glanced sideways at Kuchaq, and then back at the girl, naked, bound, and spread at the edge of the waerfall. "I can't," he apologized. "'Uywa.' You're property. Livestock. This can be a part of the t'ojsiy...sometimes." 

Dani blinked back tears of disbelief. "You can't just leave me here like this! You can't!" she cried. 

Benitez was clearly pained by the way the American girl begged him to cut her loose. He shook his head apologetically, and said again, "I can't. I just can't." He looked away from her, doing his best to avoid the disappointment and fear in the girl's eyes. "I need to go talk to Sacha Allqu. Maybe I can do something." 

"Don't leave me!" Dani sobbed, struggling against the restraints. She was being held in place, naked, in front of hundreds of Huaca in Manqus Wasi. Her arms were stretched apart, her legs spread apart. She was Ann Darrow, waiting for Kong. She was a well-meaning Catholic missionary, waiting to be boiled alive and eaten by cannibals. Nudity and dildos and orgasms -- these were the things she had signed up for. But this -- this display, this humiliation, this treatment as "livestock" -- was not what Dani had expected. She was supposed to have been greeted as a liberator, treated like Sipusiki made flesh. Instead, she was a prisoner, subject to restraints and torture. 

"You'll be okay," Benitez did his best to reassure the girl. "They won't hurt you. You'll be okay." And with that, he began to slowly back away from the edge of the cliff, a pained look quite evident on his face.

"No! No no no!" Dani screamed. "You can't leave me! Don't! No! Gabriel! Gabriel! Gabriel!" She was panicking, her naked chest rising and falling as she had almost begun to hyperventilate. She was being betrayed by the Argentine doctor, left alone. She was scared. She was humiliated. And she was crying. 

Kuchaq, apparently, could take no more of the girl's shrieks. Without looking for approval from Benitez, he grabbed the girl roughly by the jaw and crammed the gag back between her teeth. She coughed for air, recoiling at the taste of dirt and sweat on the man's fingers, her tears now streaming down her cheeks. 

She moaned and screamed into the wooden gag, her words muffled but the sounds still emanating from deep in her throat. She tried desperately to make eye contact with Benitez, but the Argentine worked just as diligently in trying to avoid it. He was brought a brown-maroon loincloth of his own by one of Kuchaq's men, and even as Dani struggled and writhed and pulled against her restraints, Benitez stepped down from the edge of Manqus Wasi and disappeared into the crowd. He was guided by Kuchaq and a number of the porters, and did not once look back at the terror-stricken brunette behind him. 

The sun was down, and night was upon them. Torchlight flickered among the tightly-packed huts and houses the Huaca had erected for themselves on this little island. The thunder of Qaqaqa Qan was omnipresent, but Dani could hear the laughs and whispers and observations taking place before her. For the longest of times, Dani stared blankly and numbly into the dirt at her feet, asking herself how she'd gotten into all this. She did her best to find some level of comfort, alternating between hanging on her wrists and standing as tall as she could in her ridiculously widespread stance. Her whole body was on fire, aching and sore. Some of it could be traced to the paddling she and Benitez had done that afternoon, but most of it was from the uncomfortable way she'd been positioned between the two trees. 

Dani continued to cry, but eventually worked up enough courage to take in her surroundings once more. There were hundreds of Huaca on the haphazard paths and alleys that made up Manqus Wasi. They were eating with their families and friends out in front of their homes. They were playing some type of game with pebbles. They were chatting and talking with one another, tending to fires, and washing dishes. They lived on top of one another, like some sort of Lower East Side tenement at the turn of the century. But none went very long without taking another look at the brunette propped up and held in place at the edge of falls, trying to make sense of her presence as much as Dani herself was trying to make sense of why she was here in the first place. 

As scared as she was, and as much as her muscles and joints ached, Dani was overcome by another sensation, a feeling of excitement. She was powerless, subject to the whims and decisions of the Huaca, unable to decide her own fate. There was a freedom in captivity, a sexual charge the likes of which Dani had never before experienced. Her nipples stood straight out, headlights in the Bolivian night. Her pussy, open by the way her thighs were pulled apart from one another, seemed to drip with some combination of water vapor thrown off by Qaqaqa Qan and her own, inimate juices. The bare skin of her neck and chest, where Summer's necklace rested against her body, felt hot and alive, as if it were being kissed by a masculine lover's rough and calloused lips. 

If the t'ojsiy were to happen that night, Dani wondered about the duration of the rite -- she very clearly was going to cum at the slightest touch. 

Dani had no concept of time, but even by the most conservative of estimates Benitez had to have been gone for close to four hours by the time he returned from Sacha Allqu's. The American had remained silent and spread apart on the cliff, having little say in the matter from the beginning. She gazed dumbly off into Manqus Wasi proper, lost in her toughts and fantasies, doing her best to escape the burning in her muscles and the heat in her pussy. She was here, but she was elsewhere, divorced from her naked body and luxuriating in it all at the same time. She was Dani D'Annuzio. She was an embarrassed American girl. She was a proud and beautiful sacrifice to Sipusiki. She was horrified. She was turned on. She was contradiction. 

"Dani," Benitez said softly to the girl as he approached. He took one step up the black, volcanic stairs, and then another. Kuchaq continued to flank him, as did a number of Kuchaq's strong, warrior-like men. "Dani." 

The girl looked up at the Argentine, as if she hadn't even seen him coming. She was down and she was beaten, and she no longer struggled against her bindings. 

"I need to talk to you," the doctor spoke as he extracted the gag from her mouth. "Are you okay?" 

"I need water," the girl croaked. Her lips and jaw hurt from having been stretched so far for so long. "I need to pee." 

Benitez turned and said something to Kuchaq, and Kuchaq barked at his men. The tall, dark-skinned man himself stepped forward and began to untie the knots around Dani's right wrist, while Benitez came up alongside her and gently touched her hip. 

"Water's coming," he assured her. "And we'll let you down to pee." 

Dani just nodded. 

As Kuchaq released Dani's right arm from its binding, the girl slumped to one side, and had to be braced by the Argentine doctor. He was still wearing nothing but the brown-maroon loincloth, and the feel of his warm, brown skin against her own was electrifying. He held her up again when Kuchaq released her left wrist, holding her slender frame in his muscular arms. She wanted to kiss him. She was drunk on her own aches and pains, on her lust and longing. 

Kuchaq freed the girl from her ankle restraints, and she took a few tentative steps away from the waterfall, Benitez guiding her and holding her up. 

"I need to pee," she said again.

"Okay," Benitez said, glancing at the tightly-packed little island spread out beneath the stairs. It was going to be difficult to get all the way to the bathhouse from where they were currently situated. "Is here okay?" 

Dani scanned the crowd that watched her every move. They stared at her naked body. They watched the way her breasts jiggled as she descended the stairs. But Dani was tired, and out of it. Her body ached, and more pressingly, her bladder ached. She'd already been humiliated more than she'd ever been before in her life, and what she'd volunteered to do for La Iniciativa was even more degrading than that. And, though he'd left her above Qaqaqa Qan, Dani still found herself trusting Benitez unwaveringly. "Okay," she replied weakly. 

Surrounded by Kuchaq and his men, and holding on to Benitez's leg for support, Dani simply squatted at the base of the stairs and relieved herself. She could giggles and twitters from the Huaca in the crowd, but she paid them no mind. She was, after all, "uywa." She was livestock. 

Freed from one more torture, Dani stood and the party continued its descent into Manqus Wasi. The Indians stepped back and cleared a path for the brunette and the doctor, and Benitez led the girl to through twisting alleys and narrow paths between the Huaca huts. As they walked, he spoke. 

"They're going to take me," he said flatly. 

Dani looked up at him, confused. He was still propping her up, helping her walk naked through Manqus Wasi, aiding her until the strength in her muscles returned. 

"So much as happened here since last year, when Summer and Taksha Kuchu were here. Knox Industries has displaced a good half dozen different villages mining for his silver alloy -- he's chased them off their land. Sikimira Qullu, Lachiwana, Wasi Masi," Benitez spoke the village names as if Dani knew them. "They fled here, to Manqus Wasi." 

Benitez met the eyes of the Huaca as they passed. Dani couldn't bring herself to do so. 

The doctor continued. "They've had so much hardship. And then the disease. I think it may have just been age, or something simple, or maybe caused by everyone living in such close quarters - but first Suwaqara, and then Qallu Qallu. It's easy for such a superstitious people to believe the worst, to believe that they've been cursed."

The Argentine cleared his throat. "And then you." 

Dani raised an eyebrow, growing concerned. 

"Sacha Allqu had expected Summer. They all had." Benitez paused. "And I think, if Summer had known what was going on here in the South, she never would have sent you. She would have come herself. She never would have asked you to perform the Yumachi ritual." 

"Yumachi?" Dani asked. "What about t'ojsiy?" 

Benitez gritted his teeth. "It's the same. More or less." He paused again. "They need me to help you." 

Dani wasn't quite sure what Benitez was getting at. She continued to stumble forward, and continued to hold onto his half-naked body for support. Did Benitez mean that he'd be holding the qollqephichilu? That he'd be in charge of driving the silver dildo in and out of her? 

"Do you remember the icons in Santa Teresa?" 

"The sun. And the...woman's vagina?" 

"Yes. Taytaku and Sipusiki. The Sun God and the Earth Goddess. It was from their union that this world came about, that Apucha and Hatucha were born -- the first man and woman." 

"I remember the story," Dani told him. 

"The Yumachi is an older version of the t'ojsiy. More fundamental. More to the roots. Taytaku and Sipusiki represented by Apucha and Hatucha, represented by man and woman." 

Dani suddenly understood. She stopped walking. Staring up at Benitez, with her lips quivering, she asked, "With you?" 

Benitez, biting his lip, said, "Yes." 

Dani wasn't sure what to feel. She hadn't signed on to have sex with anyone. She was no prostitute. She was a slut -- that much had made itself evident by what she had actually agreed to do, as well as by the fact that there had been a part of her that had actually begun to look forward to it. Dildoing herself -- or, as the case may have been, being dildoed by someone else -- was one thing, but fucking someone was something else entirely. 

But...was it? 

Dani was confused. She'd wanted Benitez. And wasn't sleeping with the Argentine better than being toyed to completion by some old Indian man? 

"You don't have to do this," Benitez offered, sensing hesitation. "Sacha Allqu believes they need to do everything in their power to appease their gods, and that they need to perform the more traditional Yumachi to the t'ojsiy. And they'd prefer to have Summer, anyways. You'll have to wait here, with them, while I take the canoe back up North to get her, but you don't have to do this." 

"No," Dani answered. "No, but I will." 

Dani had signed on with the Peace Corps to do some good in Honduras. She'd flown to Bolivia to help be a part of Summer Monroe's "public health campaign" among the Huaca Indians. She'd agreed to play the part of flesh sacrifice in Manqus Wasi because of an opportunity to help an entire generation of Huaca, an entire generation of little Chaqiscas and Qapilas. 

But Dani wanted this for herself. 

At some point in the past few days, Dani D'Annunzio had lost herself to her body. Since slipping out of her clothes by the Land Rover and slipping on Summer's necklace, it was almost as if she'd been transformed. Every sexual urge that she felt was somehow magnified, as if she were on some type of Huaca Spanish fly. The afternoon shower, the night in the tent -- Dani couldn't quite put a finger on it, but she found herself hornier than she'd been in months. Maybe ever. There was something about the way she was exposing herself, the way her breasts had been bare in Aya Pampa, the way she'd been stripped naked in the Aya Pampa bathhouse, the way she'd been propped up on display here in Manqus Wasi, the way that the Huaca were watching her naked figure even now. She was getting a sexual charge from exhibiting herself, of being naked in such a public setting. 




Flesh: Sacrifice Ch. 04



No, this wasn't going to be for the Huaca. This was going to be for Dani D'Annunzio. 

"Are you sure?" 

Dani nodded. And then she asked, "Are you?"

Benitez was a bit surprised by the question. It was clear that he hadn't given it much thought, having worried more about Dani's reaction than he had about what taking part in such a ritual meant for him. "I guess I always said that I'd put myself in Summer's shoes if I could," he answered slowly. "And it's a bit unfair to ask you to do all this if I'm not willing to subject myself to it." 

"Words every girl dreams of hearing," Dani quipped. 

"I'm sorry," he replied.

"I'm joking." 

The doctor grew silent for a few moments, the pair coming to a stop in what qualified as a small clearing at the center of Manqus Wasi. In front of them was what - at least at first glance - appeared to be a well. But steam poured out from below, billowing up into the dark Bolivian night. Dani would soon learn that Manqus Wasi, surrounded on two sides by the Rio Rosa, was also home to a series of hot springs deep beneath the surface. 

"They're going to take me away," Benitez said after a few minutes of watching the steam dissapate overhead. "I'm going tonight. I'll be back tomorrow evening." 

"To where?"

Benitez shrugged. "I'm not sure. Away? They need to 'prepare' me for the role of Taytaku." 

Body-paint and braided hair, Dani thought to herself. She assumed that she would need to be "prepared" to play the role of Sipusiki, as well. All she said was, "It's late." 

"Are you sure about this?" 

Dani glanced around the clearing, finally meeting the eyes of Manqus Wasi. These people would watch her fuck the Argentine doctor. These people would watch as she climaxed in front of them. These people would see her cum, see her squealing and screaming in front of them while she was being penentrated by Benitez's surprisingly large cock. She licked her lips unconsciously, and answered, "I'm sure." 

"Kuchaq will take you to Sacha Allqu," Benitez explained slowly. Gesturing towards one of Kuchaq's men, he said, "I'm going with Tiyan Tiyan."

"Tomorrow," Dani confirmed, standing up, alone, on wobbly legs. 

"Tomorrow," Benitez replied. He looked at her as if he had more to say, but couldn't find a way to say it. Instead, he just backed away, and followed Tiyan Tiyan off into the crowded village of Manqus Wasi. 

Dani, surrounded by a crowd of brown-skinned Indians in one of the most remote corners of the world, was naked and alone. 

***

To see Sacha Allqu in person was to experience the girl's undeniable royal presence, to bear witness to a backwoods beauty, a goddess in and of herself. When Dani had first met Summer, she'd been struck by the blonde's confident sexuality, a trait that Sacha Allqu seemed to share with the biologist in spades. The Chieftainess couldn't have been any older than eighteen, and her young, supple body belonged not in Manqus Wasi but rather gracing the pages of a lingerie catalog or an adult magazine. She, like so many others among the Huaca, had strong, striking features that looked more Asiatic than South American, with almond-shaped eyes and soft, tanned features. Dark eyes, dark skin, and dark hair, the girl was smaller than Dani in both height and chest size, but she owned the large lodge that both women now found themselves in, Sacha Allqu's presence making her seem three or four times Dani's size. 

The girl was seated upon a bamboo throne, decorated with flowers and feathers as if to signify just how important she was to Manqus Wasi. She wore a dangerously short, yellowish loincloth, but her legs were crossed and it was impossible to see anything between them. Unlike the other women of her village, she was topless, and her moderately-sized chest was as exposed as Dani's own, her breasts utterly perfect in their appearance. Her nipples stood straight out, though Dani guessed that had less to do with any sort of sexual excitement than it did with the fact that they'd been pierced through with two simple-looking silver hoops. Her belly button was similarly adorned, as was her chin, her ears, and -- when she first spoke she confirmed it -- her tongue. Around her neck was a large collection of gold, silver, and clay jewelry, resting alluringly between her two breasts. 

The lodge sat just off the steaming well where Benitez had left the girl. Dani wasn't sure whether it was a home, or a temple, or a palace, but whatever its name, it was packed tight with Huaca. Sacha Allqu sat at one end on her throne, flanked by Kuchaq and a number of other advisors, while Dani knelt in the dirt before her. Standing, sitting, and crouching around her, pressing up against one another were as many villagers of Manqus Wasi as the lodge would allow. It was hot inside, and the air tasted like the sweat and flesh of dozens of people. 

Dani was no less naked than she'd been when Kuchaq led her inside the Lodge and sat her before Sacha Allqu. She wore the necklace that Summer had given her, as well as the fraying sapumpa fern braid. Her skin was bare, save for the small butterfly tattoo that had earned her the nickname, "Qapila," and the yellow-orange handprint of an Aya Pampa girl whose name Dani couldn't remember. Her hair was a veritable bird's nest, flowing this way and that, and cascading wildly down her neck and past her shoulders. 

There was a menace in Sacha Allqu's eyes, and though the two were entirely unable to communicate with one another -- Sacha Allqu spoke no Spanish or English, and Dani spoke no Huaca -- Dani knew full well that she was going to be tested tonight. 

It had to have been past midnight by the time that Dani was brought to the lodge, just based on how long the sun had been down and how long she'd been bound and gagged at the waterfall's edge. But disappointment that Dani was not Summer seemed to be abating, and the full celebration of Phancha -- with all the requisite music and dancing and laughing -- sounded as if it were underway outside the lodge. Manqus Wasi may not have had Summer Monroe, but they had their sacrifice nonetheless. 

Sacha Allqu gestured to one of her people, who stepped from the masses and placed a large wooden bowl in front of Dani. The brunette knew right away what was inside -- she could smell the purple chicha qullisara before she saw it. The strong, powerful corn liquor was a gift for her, and though it was more than Dani was capable of drinking, she knew she had to accept it as she had with Uturunku.

As Dani lifted the bowl to her mouth, Sacha Allqu rose from where she'd been sitting. She moved languidly, slithering towards Dani as if she were some type of jungle snake, oozing sexuality as she walked. If she'd flashed anyone from beneath her loincloth, the crowd showed no reaction, and now the material hung teasingly over her sex. Dani took a first, small sip of chicha, coughing at the burn, but the Chieftainess wouldn't let her stop. The Indian girl tipped the bowl forward, and Dani had no choice but to continue swallowing the salty purple alcohol, choking it down as best she could. 

Dani's eyes watered and her throat burned, but she took every last drop that she'd been offered, knowing full well that she'd just done a good seven or eight shots at once. She coughed violently, and steeled herself for whatever was next. She would do what was asked of her tonight -- given that there was no way to protest even if she intended to, Dani was giving herself to the village of Manqus Wasi. In an instant, she knew she'd be drunk, and she knew that she'd be even more malleable than she'd intended. Sacha Allqu called for the bowl to be filled once more, and though Dani did not think she could keep another bowl down, she said nothing. 

The chieftainess, taking Dani's bare shoulders in her hands, gently pushed the girl backwards and onto her back. The brunette was now lying naked in the dirt at the center of the lodge, her knees bent and her arms awkwardly at her sides. Sacha Allqu flattened her legs, and then crouching over the American girl, set herself down on the girl's naked thighs. She reached up and took off the necklace and the sapumpa ferns and in their place laid a set of four silver coins -- maybe the size of half-dollars -- atop Dani's forehead, atop her pursed lips, and atop each nipple. 

The feeling was electrifying. Dani didn't want to lose Summer's necklace of silver beads and jaguar teeth, and whimpered a little as it was taken from her. But each of the coins was smooth and cold, and seemed to send sparks directly into Dani's body as they were applied. She breathed through her nose, thanks to the disc on her lips, the cool metal making it feel as if her mouth had become another erogenous zone. 

Sacha Allqu, acting chieftainess or medicine woman or perhaps both, called for something, and an old-looking leather sack was produced alongside another bowl of chicha qullisara. This time, it was Sacha Allqu who drank from the bowl, but unlike Dani, she did not swallow. Mouth full of the thick, salty, purple liquor, the chieftainess leaned forward, and after temporarily removing the silver coin from Dani's mouth, kissed the American girl on the lips. The chicha qullisara passed from one woman's mouth to the other, Dani having little choice but to accept the other woman's offering. The whole ceremony, and the entirety of Manqus Wasi, seemed completely foreign and alien to Dani. She swallowed the liquor passed to her through the gentle lips of the chieftainess, her head spinning and her chest burning once more. Dani stared absently towards the ceiling of the lodge as Sacha Allqu pulled away, paying no attention to the fact that the Huaca girl was rifling through the leather bag. 

Forcefully, Sacha Allqu took the brunette's jaw in her left hand, and Dani allowed herself to be manipulated. With her right, the chieftainess inserted her fingers into the American girl's mouth, and found her tongue between her thumb and middle finger. It was awkward, especially given that Sacha Allqu clung to a long, thin, metal wire in her right palm that pressed itself up against Dani's face. Only too late did Dani realize what the instrument was for. 

The taste of blood drew Dani back from roof of the lodge, where she'd been lost in absentminded contemplation. She focused immediately, and tried to jerk away from the Chieftainess, but Sacha Allqu kept a strong and forceful grip on the brunette's jaw. She drew her piercing needle -- and, of course, that was what had just been run through Dani's tongue -- up and out of Dani's mouth, the naked girl trying to shriek and scream to no avail. Moving with lightning speed, Sacha Allqu replaced the needle with thicker silver rod, slipping it into the hole she'd just created before Dani had even been able to vocalize a coherent protest. She twisted it quickly while Dani's eyes rolled back into her head, and snapped a silver bead into place at the top. 

Dani kicked at the dark-skinned girl on top of her, and crawled backwards on her elbows out of the center of the lodge. She wasn't sure where she was going, or how far she thought she'd get while being surrounded by then entirety of Manqus Wasi, but instinct -- fight, flight, or fuck -- a taken hold, and Dani simply wanted to get as far away from Sacha Allqu as possible. 

Sacha Allqu would not allow it, however. She barked an order at Kuchaq and another man, and they descended upon the American girl. Even as she squirmed and fought on the dirt floor of the lodge, Kuchaq grabbed both her wrists together in just one of his big hands, while his companion managed to take hold of her ankles. Sacha Allqu, not the least bit deterred by the fight in her uywa, took another quick swig of the chicha qullisara, and spat it messily into the brunette's now-bloodied mouth. She found another small bowl, this one filled with a thick white paste that reminded a surprisingly lucid Dani of kindergartners' glue. 

"Samincha," Sacha Allqu spoke to Dani, dipping her fingers into the paste and then smearing it on Dani's tongue. The brunette gagged a bit at the bittersweet taste, but she found that the pain almost instantly abated. Her tongue was numb, but no longer did it sting quite so violently. "Samincha," apparently, was some sort of Huaca salve. 

Dani calmed noticeably, and though her head spun from the alcohol, the sudden violence, and the numbness of the salve, she was coherent enough to process what had just happened to her. She'd been pierced. She'd been run through by one of Sacha Allqu's needles. She'd been fitted with a tongue piercing. 

Dani closed her eyes and breathed deeply. Her chest heaved, and only then did she realize the silver disks has fallen from her nipples during her struggle. And, though it was stupid -- Dani knew that much -- she felt somehow more naked, more weak, and more victimized without them. Her chest heaved, her breasts rising and falling with each breath. Kuchaq still held her wrists tightly, the other man still firmly gripping her ankles. 

The tongue, by no means, would be the last of Dani's new jewelry. 

She knew that fact instantly - there was more coming. These were a people who believed in their ritual scarring and body paint and piercings here, there, and everywhere. They had been waiting for Summer Monroe, who'd been fitted with her own silver jewelry some time ago. They were being ruled over by a chieftainess/medicine woman who sported more silver poking through her various body parts than Dani even owned back in the States. And Dani was to be at the center of a rite in which her body and her sex were to be the focal point of the Huaca's attention. It was pointless to fight. 

Dani didn't particularly want her tongue or any other part of her body pierced. But then, she hadn't wanted to be naked on the Bolivian frontier, either, her clothes that hadn't been tossed carelessly down the Rio Rosa god-knows-where in Manqus Wasi. She didn't want to be held captive and used as a sexual sacrifice to Sipusiki. She didn't want to be fucked by Gabriel Benitez Serrano (or did she?) in front of a crowd. 

But in for a penny, in for a pound. Dani went limp. 

Sure enough, Sacha Allqu was far from finished. The chieftainess took another mouthful of the chicha qullisara, and then sucked Dani's left nipple into her mouth. The brunette gasped at the sensation. Her mouth still filled with liquor, Sacha Allqu then moved to Dani's right, and did the same. Apparently, Dani put together, this was her way of sterilizing the site of the piercing; though, if Dani's nipples hadn't already been standing straight out, at attention, it might have also been useful in exciting the subject. The chieftainess swallowed what remained of the liquor, but purple liquid trickled sensually from Dani's areolae down her bare and goose-bumped skin. 

Dani wasn't fighting anymore, but Kuchaq and the other man still held her firmly by her wrists and ankles. This turned out to be for the best, as even steeling herself for the expected prick did little to keep Dani from bucking her whole body at the pain of a needle piercing through her left nipple. She squirmed and screamed, the shriek of pain eliciting no reaction whatsoever from the Huaca crowd that watched. And, even had they spoken English, none would have been able to make sense of the brunette's nonsensical, gutteral cries, the incoherence of exclamations of sharp pain magnified by the fact that Dani's tongue with still numb. 

One nipple, and then the other. Sacha Allqu pierced both, and then -- working as quickly as she had with Dani's tongue -- outfitted her with the vicious-looking nipple piercings she was intended to wear for the Yumachi ritual. A barbell, for lack of a better description, ran horizontally through each nipple. It was attached at either end to a silver ring that ran the circumference around the nipples themselves. And the ring, in turn, had been fitted with long, half-inch-in-length spikes that gave the appearance of rays of sunlight emanating from the center of Dani's breasts. Dani took one look at them, gagged at the very sight, and looked away, tears welling up in her eyes. Sacha Allqu slathered each nipple with the "samincha," and they, too, went numb to the pain. 

Dani's bellybutton had already been pierced, so Sacha Allqu thankfully passed by that particular body orifice. But Dani gritted her teeth at the thought of what was next, and the thought of what the chieftainess was about to do to her body. And yet, she didn't fight, she didn't struggle against Kuchaq or the other man. She laid limp, aside from gently parting her legs, and waited for the Huaca girl to do her worst. Though this had never been a part of what Dani had agreed to back in San Eduardo, had never even remotely entered her imagination when she'd met little Qapila at the Oveja Negra, she had given up. The Huaca were going to do to her what they felt most necessary for the success of the Yumachi ritual, what they felt was most necessary to appease their demanding gods. Dani was no longer the Dani she'd always been; rather, she'd become something else -- subject, object, a tool to be put to good use. She was a tool for the Yumachi, and her function was no more than to fuck. 

Though she'd been expecting it, electricity nonetheless still sparked through Dani's nether regions as Sacha Allqu flicked at the brunette's pussy with her tongue. Dani's mind wandered, wondering whether this would be considered a lesbian experience. It was, wasn't it? Throughout her time at NYU and after, she'd joked with friends about kissing other girls or having a "bi" experience. But laughing and giggling about it as much as she had, Dani had never actually acted upon such naughtiness. And, truth be told, Dani was unsure of whether this actually counted. After all, she wasn't a woman, exactly -- not right now, not in the context of what Sacha Allqu was doing to her, and what the Huaca were preparing to do to her afterwards. She was a "thing," a religious object, and Sacha Allqu was doing little more than preparing that object for its intended purpose. 

The combination of the warm, sticky chicha qullisara combined with the warmth of Sacha Allqu's own breath caused a wave of pleasure to wash over Dani's body. The chieftainess flicked her tongue, just enough to tease the already erect clit to throb at the sensation. Dani fully expected a sharp and violent pain in just seconds, but in that moment, all she felt was carnal pleasure. Given how on edge she'd been since first entering the lodge -- no, perhaps it was since she'd first entered the valley itself -- Dani didn't think it would take long for the Huaca girl to get her off. But Dani's orgasm was not what Sacha Allqu was after -- at least, not at that particular moment. The chieftainess placed her left thumb under Dani's clit to keep it steady, and used her right hand to insert her needle into the American's tender flesh one more time. 

Dani howled. Some wild combination of pleasure and pain wrapped itself around her spine and surged to every extremity in her body. Dani had never fully understood masochism until that very moment, and now that she'd experienced it, she might never be the same. 

She came.

And she came violently. 

Eyes rolling back in her head, the brunette screamed something entirely unintelligible, representing the pinnacle of orgasm as much as the nadir of bodily harm. She was sweating, and she was covered in the dirt from the lodge's floor. She had a sheen of perspiration and chicha and the chieftainess's saliva and her own pussy juices all over her body. Her hair was matted against her forehead, and her tongue and nipples continued to throb despite the dullness of their pain. Her shriek was high-pitched and animalistic, as if she were channeling every woman and every female beast who'd ever orgasmed before her. She bucked up against Sacha Allqu's finger tips, even as the Huaca girl did her best to hold the American steady, fitting her uywa with her new decoration.