Galena

Galena grew out of hot metal-bearing water moving through limestone. Lead and sulphur met down there and stacked into perfect right-angled cubes.

It is lead. Wash your hands every time you touch it, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Aries, you pick up the heaviest thing in the house so nobody else has to, and then you resent them for it.

Somebody clapped for you young, and only ever at the beginning. So you learned that the reward arrives in week one.

Now the second month of anything feels like being forgotten on purpose. You leave good things at the exact point they go quiet.

Nobody cheered this cube into shape. What would you finish if no one was watching?

This is lead sulphide. The bright silver on those cube faces is the same metal they pulled back out of petrol.

Wash your hands every time you touch it, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Taurus, you stopped trusting anything shiny and cheap, and you had a reason.

Somebody sold you a story once, back when you were younger and had less. You paid for it in money or in years, and you decided never again.

Now you check everything twice and call it being sensible. The cost is that a good thing has to prove itself for months before you let it near you.

Handling this one briefly is low risk. Living with it means a labelled box and a closed lid.

You have been holding it in the window light, turning it over. Those right angles came from lead and sulphur crystallising slowly in hot water underground.

It is lead. Wash your hands after, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and never leave it where a child or an animal can reach.

Gemini, you hand people something heavy wrapped in a joke and they carry it home without knowing.

You worked out early that being clever kept people around, and that being plain got you nothing. So the plain sentence started to feel like a risk.

Now somebody asks how you are and you give them the funny version. The true one sits under it, unsaid, all evening.

Say the plain one to one person this week.

Lead and sulphur came together in hot water underground and grew into cubes with perfect right angles. That took longer than any patience you have ever been asked for.

The bright faces are pure lead. Wash your hands every time, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Cancer, you have been asked for more patience than anybody has, and you keep finding a bit more.

Somebody in your house needed you before you were old enough to say no. You got good at reading a mood through a wall.

Now you feel a room change hours before anyone speaks, and you carry it alone, and nobody thanks you because nobody noticed.

You noticed. That was the whole job.

People have dug this out of the ground for thousands of years, and never for its looks. They wanted the lead inside it, and often the silver riding along with it.

It is lead. Wash your hands every time you touch it, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Leo, people have always wanted something out of you and it was never how you looked.

You learned young that being the warm one was how you got to stay. So you check faces before you check yourself.

By the time everyone has gone home you have no idea what you actually felt tonight. You ask a friend how it went, because she seems to know.

Nobody ever wanted this rock for the shine.

Galena is soft, softer than a coin, so it smudges grey onto whatever touches it. It tarnishes dull, and salt and water eat at it.

That grey smudge is lead. Wash your hands every time, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Virgo, you have been carrying something heavy in your hands and calling it a normal week.

There was a year when everything was falling and the small stuff was the only thing you could control. So you controlled it, beautifully.

The habit stayed. You will reorganise a whole cupboard rather than make one phone call. You will be exhausted after and no closer.

Some things do not get handled. They get put behind glass.

Under the silver look this is lead sulphide, one of the heaviest things you can hold at that size. The cubes were not carved. They grew that way in limestone.

Wash your hands every time you touch it, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Libra, you carry far more than you look like you carry, and you made sure nobody can tell.

You watched an argument as a kid and decided it would never happen in a room you were in. You learned to answer in a way nobody could be hurt by.

Now you cannot say which restaurant you want, because wanting things out loud once made a house go quiet.

The wanting is still in there. When did you last say it out loud?

It sits in a closed box on the shelf and you keep lifting the lid to look. Hot water carrying lead and sulphur made those right angles underground, cube by cube.

It is lead. Wash your hands every time, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Scorpio, you learned at eleven that the truth leaves a mark on whoever handles it.

You were maybe eleven, and you were only being honest, and their face changed. So you built a smaller version of yourself and sent that one out instead.

It works. It also means the people who love you are loving the short version, and you are the only one who knows there is more.

This stone is not lighter than it looks either.

Lead and sulphur crystallised out of hot water in veins and in limestone. What came out was heavy, silver-bright, cut into right angles by nothing but time.

It is lead, and it is soft enough to shed dust. Wash your hands every time, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Sagittarius, you are carrying something heavy and quietly poisonous, and you keep telling people it is nothing.

Someone spent your childhood telling you what you could not do, and being wrong about it. So you stopped filing warnings anywhere useful.

That instinct has saved you more than once. You also gave the one true warning the same shrug as the rest. You paid for that one.

This warning is true. Wash your hands.

Galena goes from bright silver to a dull grey and it does not come back. Salt corrodes it. Water is worse.

Under the tarnish it is still lead. Wash your hands every time you touch it, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Capricorn, you keep handling the thing that harms you because somebody has to.

You were about nine when you worked out that being useful got you treated well. So you have been useful ever since. You have never asked for anything without earning it first.

The last time you were ill you apologised out loud, to somebody who did not need an apology.

None of this was witnessed. It is still the heaviest thing in the room.

Miners have chased this rock for the lead in it, and for the silver that often rides along. Roman pipes were made of that metal. So was the stuff they took back out of petrol.

It is lead. Wash your hands every time, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Aquarius, there is something valuable in you that arrived attached to something you have to be careful with.

You were the odd one somewhere early, a classroom or a kitchen table, and you got through it by watching from slightly outside. That worked.

You can explain your friend's whole family in four minutes. You cannot say what you needed last Tuesday.

Come inside the room. You are allowed to be in it.

Take the silver look away and this is lead sulphide, grown in hot water underground into right-angled cubes. It is absurdly heavy for its size.

It is lead. Wash your hands every time you touch it, never make it an elixir, never grind or tumble it, and keep it away from children and animals.

Pisces, what you have been handling for years leaves something on you that a rinse does not shift.

Everything anyone in the room is feeling comes straight in, and it always has, and as a kid you assumed that was normal for everybody.

Nobody told you it was not, so you never learned to close anything. Now you come home from a party and lie down for two hours.

You are not too much. You are unshuttered.