Iolite

Mud on an old seafloor got buried under a mountain belt and cooked until the atoms rearranged into something else. What came out is cordierite, which the trade calls iolite.

Nobody treats it. It is one of the few stones sold exactly as it was found.

Aries, people only ever get one side of you and you have decided that is their fault.

You were praised for how fast you got going long before anybody praised you for finishing. So speed became your reputation and then quietly became your standard.

Now a slow patch reads as a wrong turn. You have abandoned two things at the point where they were about to hold.

That mud took a mountain and a very long time. Nothing about it was quick.

Hold it under one lamp and turn it slowly. Violet blue from this side, smoky grey from the next, nearly clear from the third. Blue glass cannot do that.

The test is free and it takes four seconds. Tanzanite changes too, but it never goes to clear grey, and it is softer.

Taurus, you stopped trusting anything shiny and cheap, and somebody taught you that.

You bought a story once with your own money and found out afterwards what you had actually paid for. You did not make a fuss. You raised the price of your trust and never lowered it.

Now good things queue outside for months, and one or two of them stopped queuing.

Turn it under a lamp. Nobody has to tell you what you are holding.

It is hard, but it has one direction that wants to split. A knock in the wrong place and it parts cleanly, which is why it stays out of ultrasonic cleaners.

The rest of it is straight. Untreated cordierite, cooked out of seafloor mud under a mountain, showing three different colours depending on the angle.

Gemini, you are a different colour depending on where somebody stands, and you never stand still to check.

Being quick kept people around you when you were young, and being plain did not. So the flat true sentence started to feel like a risk.

Somebody asked what is going on with you and got the entertaining version. The real one was three words and slightly grey.

Three angles. Three colours. All of them it.

Under the name it is cordierite, which used to be mud on a seafloor. Buried under a mountain belt and cooked, it came out a different mineral entirely.

The colour is not one colour. Violet blue, smoky grey and almost clear, depending on which way you hold it, and nobody added any of them.

Cancer, you got buried under something at fifteen and came out a different person entirely.

Somebody at home needed steadying before you were old enough to be steady, and you did it, and it was never once discussed.

You have lost your bearings lately and you are still answering questions as though you have them. You keep saying fine to people who would have stayed.

The fog is real. You are not making it up.

It gets set beside tanzanite, sapphire and blue glass and priced against all three. It is none of them, and the three-way colour change proves it in four seconds.

Nothing was done to it to help it sell. Untreated cordierite, out of cooked seafloor mud.

Leo, you keep getting compared to people you were never trying to be.

Being the bright one bought your place somewhere early, and you have kept paying long after anybody was charging. Nobody hands that job back.

By the end of a night you know exactly how everybody else is doing. You have three different answers about yourself and no idea which one is true.

Turn yourself under the lamp for a second.

Clay and mud on an old seafloor were buried, pressed and heated under a growing mountain until they became a new mineral. That is the whole story of iolite.

It reaches you untreated, which is more than almost anything else in that display case can say.

Virgo, you turned into somebody new under all that and nobody marked the date.

You were the competent one before you had a vote on it. Competent children get given more to carry, never more help carrying it.

So you clear every small solvable thing at speed, and the one unfixable thing sits in the corner getting older.

It has a direction that splits. Everything does.

Put it on the table by a single lamp and move your head, not the stone. It goes blue, then smoky grey, then nearly colourless, and all three are the same rock.

Blue glass holds one colour from every angle. That is how you tell in four seconds, and it costs nothing.

Libra, you show a different colour to every person in the room and cannot remember which one is yours.

When you were young one honest sentence could change a whole evening for a whole house. You learned to give whichever answer kept the house calm.

Now you can spend an hour being agreeable and go home without having said one true thing you wanted.

Say the true one. Ruin nothing.

It takes daily wear and it takes water, but it has one plane that will split if you knock it hard enough. Hard is not the same as unbreakable.

Everything else about it is plain. Untreated cordierite, cooked out of seafloor mud, showing three colours because that is simply what it does.

Scorpio, you have three sides and you decided at some point that only one was allowed out.

You were young and you were telling the truth, and you watched a room go careful around you. After that you sent out a version with two of the three colours removed.

People are comfortable with her. You have spent years being the only one who knows what got cut.

This one shows all three or none.

Take the lore off and it is cordierite, a mineral made from cooked seafloor mud under a mountain. Hard, untreated, and it changes colour with the angle.

Norse sailors may have used thin slices of it to find the sun through cloud. That story is argued over, so hold it loosely.

Sagittarius, everything under you got buried and cooked, and you turned into somebody new without telling anyone.

Adults spent your childhood listing what you could not do and being wrong nearly every time. So you stopped taking careful people seriously at all.

It has shown you things most people only hear about. You also learned to hold every story loosely, including the good ones about yourself. That has cost you more than you say.

The Norse story might not be true. This rock still is.

Jewellers set it beside tanzanite and price it low, because tanzanite has the better name. Same tray, different story.

Iolite is untreated cordierite, cooked out of seafloor mud under a mountain. Nothing was added to make it worth anything.

Capricorn, you watched somebody with a better story get the thing you had done the work for.

Somebody handed you the responsible job before you were old enough to say no. Everybody around you got lighter the moment you took it.

Rest goes down as waste. So do the years you spent keeping other people upright, because there is nothing at the end of them to show anybody.

Nobody watched this get made either.

Mud that sat on a seafloor was buried under a mountain belt and heated until it rearranged itself into cordierite. It came out of that with three colours in it.

No treatment, no dye, no heat in a workshop afterwards. The changing colour is the mineral itself.

Aquarius, people say you are different depending on who they ask, and all of them are looking at the same you.

You were made to feel odd somewhere early, and you got through it by moving half a pace out and studying the room. That was a good solution at eleven.

You can read a stranger's whole situation from one sentence. You cannot say what has actually been wrong with you since March.

Turn yourself. See what comes up.

Turn it slowly under one lamp in a dark room. It goes violet blue, then smoky grey, then nearly clear, and nothing was done to it to make that happen.

It is untreated cordierite, cooked out of old seafloor mud. Blue glass shows one colour from every angle, which is how you catch a fake.

Pisces, you are a different colour from every side and people argue about which one is real.

Whatever anybody near you is carrying arrives in you complete, and it always has, and as a child you assumed everybody was built that way.

Nobody corrected you, so you never learned where you stop. You have lost your bearings and you are still telling people you are fine.

Who told you that being lost was the same as failing?