May 27

Who you are

You are the person who asks what exactly somebody means by soon. It irritates people until the day it saves them, and then they ask you to look over the contract. You have seen too many disputes that came down to a word two parties understood differently, and you would rather spend ten uncomfortable minutes now than two years later.

There is fairness in this as well as fussiness. You hold yourself to the same standard, you correct your own record when you find you were wrong, and you do not use precision to win a point you should have lost. Mercury gives you the memory for how a phrase was used in March, which is either a gift or a menace depending on the week.

Your gifts

• Exactness. You pin down what a word means before anybody signs anything or promises anything.
• Consistent standards. You apply the same rigour to your own claims that you apply to everyone else's.
• Long memory for detail. You recall what was actually said, not the improved version people remember.

Your shadow

Precision aimed at people becomes a weapon with very good manners. You correct your partner's account of a holiday, your friend's harmless exaggeration, your mother's date for something that happened in 1998, and each correction is accurate and each one costs you a little warmth. Eventually people tell you less, not because you are wrong, but because talking to you is work.

Your soul work

Use the exactness on things rather than on people. Define the contract, the plan, the problem, and let a friend be imprecise in peace over dinner. Your soul work is being the person who clarifies rather than the person who corrects.

Days you get along with

Your sign

The third sign carries the gift of curiosity and the burden of its own quickness. Gemini is the zodiac learning to speak, and learning to land.

Someone else

Look up another birthday

Check a friend's day, or your partner's, and send it to them.