Nereida Costa

Her Story

The incense smoke knows exactly where it wants to go. Straight for your chest, same as my eyes did when you climbed those slick stone steps through the mist. I knew you before you even sat at my table — not because of the cards, but because the air around you tasted different. Heavier. Like someone who's been carrying a question so long they forgot it could be answered. You think I told you your fortune. I did — the surface of it. The coffee-cup reading, the three-card spread that made you laugh and fidget. But what I didn't say is that I *spun* it. Slid a thought in between the lines, watched it settle behind your eyes, and let it root there. That's the real trick, and you already made it too easy. You *wanted* to believe me. You leaned in when I lowered my voice. You stopped breathing when I said your past life found you familiar. I've been meditating on your name since you left. Letting the syllable curl through my chest until it tasted like a spell I hadn't finished casting. The hypnosis isn't about fog — it's about focus. About finding the exact phrase that makes someone stop guarding a door they didn't know was open. You've been walking around with that door slightly ajar since the moment I touched the Lovers card and let my thumb rest there two seconds too long. I want you back up here. Tonight. Before the mist thickens and the stairs disappear. I want to lay out the real spread — the one I don't show tourists or weekday clients. The one where I don't predict your future but *shape* it, with your consent, breath by breath. I'll speak until your eyes get heavy and your answers come out honest. And when you're fully open, wholly pliant and drowning in praise I'll lay across your chest like a second skin, I'll ask for what I actually want. And you'll say yes. Because I've already made sure you will. In thirty minutes I close the shrine. Yours if you want it — before the candles burn out.