Thus the priest in Motovun while lighting the fire in front of the church on Black Saturday or Easter Eve, according to Livio Prodan, a student of the hilltown’s past who has taught history of Istria in Trieste for many a year. This is what I learned at his lecture in Motovun this evening. Easter is the beginning of a new season and a new life. And this Easter is the beginning of my new love affair with this place. “Here is new fire,” I repeat to myself in the Venetian dialect over and over again. Am I going nuts? Perhaps, but it still feels wonderful. Actually, breathtaking. Which is why Prodan’s lecture will stay with me for quite some time, and maybe even forever. Whatever happens with the new fire in my life, I will never forget the joy with which I have received the priest’s words of old. Although Easter is some way away still, it is already with me in my heart. “Here is new fire,” I reassure myself time and again in the language of my ancestors. And fire it is.