Ilmar Penna Marinho Junior - The beast of a thousand years

Leonardo kept listening for another half hour, his eyes fixed on the colored symbols of his chart.

“Everything indicates that the time to learn how to deal with the things that are blocking this decisive moment in your life has come. You are an ambitious person and will know how to use all the means you have to achieve your goals. The prediction is that you’ll get everything that you wish for. The power you’ll have in your hands is amazing, if you know how to use the transformative energy of Pluto, the god of darkness, to evolve. Be very careful with the underground and fire.”

They heard scratching and more intense barks from the dogs, maybe hungry. Lisa wasn’t disturbed by it and went on.

“Many good, promising things are about to happen. I may be wrong but, in this year of transformations, you have everything to become a great boss. There’s even a specific time for them to be fulfilled. You’re going to pay a price that only you can say if it’s high or fair. Well, this is all I can read from your chart.”

“Ms. Lisa, I’m sorry, but I feel that you’re hiding something from my current life”, he complained, noticing some embarrassment after an hour of consultation, thus ending a session that seemed vaguely based on astrology and seduction.

“I didn’t hide anything. Reading a chart is not fortune-telling. Please, Mr. Leonardo, your consultation is over.”

After the warning, he saw her tilt her thin neck and her breasts, outlined in her thin blouse, heave, before a long, mysterious sigh.

“Excuse me”, muttered the astrologer, standing up as if she wanted to cheat time with a strategic pause. From the kitchen door, she asked, “Would you like a glass of water? Tonic?”

“No, thank you. I would like to continue with the consultation, please.”

Lisa didn’t return immediately, but when she came nearer, she was bringing more soda on the silver tray, a sign that she was willing to resume the reading with more information, and that was what she did for another thirty minutes with other revelations, concluding:

“Understand, Mr. Leonardo: I cannot change your chart. You will be dealing with very profound things in your inner self. If you make the right decisions, things will flow and your life will be transformed for the better. You’ll experience very tense moments because you’ll go through a phase of many changes.”

“I promise I won’t stay still.”

“Here’s Jupiter, the planet of optimism, signaling a period of great expansion. Your life will be transformed. Of course, you will be tested to become the wealthy man your father wanted to be.”

He stared at her, gritting his teeth at the mention of his father.

“It’s not a coincidence that you’re here today to rethink your life. You’ll have the help of powerful forces. All these energies will act in your favor. A former Brazilian president, in an adverse political context, disregarded them, calling them ‘hidden forces’. In your case, they are going to help you to get where you want. It’s only a matter of time.”

She paused, staring at a point in the solar revolution chart as if she had discovered something astonishing.

“There’s something weird showing up right here.”

“What do you mean?” asked Leonardo, curious.

“It’s as if there’s a shadow, someone with whom you’re going to make a pact. You’ll have a lot of money, much more than you imagine. You can lose everything, but not the money. This shadow is associated with a situation of many surprises. It will force you to live on the edge from now on. Never forget that!”

A gust of air came through the window. There was something mysterious, evil, in the spontaneity with which the gust blew the charts.

“I’m going to act, Lisa, I promise”, he replied, using for the first time the name of the astrologer with a surprising intimacy.

At that very moment, totally seduced by her looks, he asked something about her tan and lightly felt the skin on Lisa’s bare shoulder, who did not react to his bold touch. She just closed the eyelids of her hazel eyes. Leonardo’s fingertips then went on. They reached the back of her neck. His arm wrapped around her neck to then pull it gently and kiss her on her half-open lips without lipstick.

On the way down, in the elevator, after the happy ending of the astrological consultation, Leonardo was totally convinced:

“I’m living on the edge.”

What surprised him the most were the wild twists of fate and passion. They were always unpredictable. Lisa’s final words came to his mind. He would not forget the omens of the stars, let alone the abundance of money spilling over the edge of his chart.

*

Something weird had made Lisa get interested in studying that chart, where death and greed teemed. This only made her curiosity grow. After she’d typed the data, day, month, year, time and place of birth, she saw the path of his planetary cycles appear on the computer screen. And, very shaken, she saw that his chart was the complement to her own. The degrees of the ascendant were identical, planetary twins, and equal in the matters of soul and body. The most astonishing revelation would come later, when she put his solar revolution on top of her own chart. She was able to identify the arrival of a new man, nameless in her chart, about to bring major changes to her quiet day-to-day life.

After Leonardo’s fiery touch and a kiss, Lisa threw herself in his arms. She felt all the heat and the smell of lavender of his manly body. They let their tongues linger on the craving of the kisses, with no beginning or end, as if it was the first time they had ever been kissed. The mutual caresses intensified wildly between the woman and the man of perfect astral conjunction. They could no longer hear the dogs bark jealously. Lisa let her shirt fall to the floor. The mouth of that man out of his mind went down to her breasts. The living room carpet was present so as not to delay the surrender. Wearing only her skirt and kissing his ear, she whispered to him that she had her period. The trespasser didn’t seem disturbed by the detail. On the contrary, that man, as unknown as he was known, hurried to pull off her lacy panties and penetrate her. And after the exaltation of the passionate bodies and the bright conjunction of the planets, they would never be the same again.

When the earthquake was over, nothing moved on the earth and the sky. Not a whisper, just the silence of the blessed. Lisa thought about the power of passion, what He must have felt when He created man. It was late already. There was no way of not communicating that a consultant from Petrópolis would arrive at any moment. Leonardo sympathized with her professional integrity. He rose quickly from the carpet and standing, naked, regained that unique look, one she had never seen from any other man. He asked if he could take a shower. Completely dizzy with everything that had happened, she tried to put things back in their place while she was alone in the room, realigning the couch and chairs. She realized how unlikely it was to return to her former calmness with the scent of him pervading her hands, down the pores of her neck, breasts, arms, hands, buttocks, legs, pubis, all over her body, in delicious indolence. She wanted to wrap her long legs around him on her flowery sheets.

Later, during a long bath, she recalled some of the things she’s read on Leonardo’s solar chart. Some tragic events. She relived the moment when she shuddered upon hearing form his sexy mouth the confession that he had entertained the thought of committing the same foolishness as his father. The revelation left her livid and speechless as she continued the reading. She thought it was advisable to pause and invoke the deities to help her in counseling the imponderable of astrology.