Larimar

Larimar filled gas bubbles in volcanic rock in one small stretch of the Dominican Republic. Traces of copper turned it sky blue, and nowhere else on earth has produced it.

The Atlantis name got attached later, out of Edgar Cayce's readings. The stone was here first.

Aries, you go straight at things, except this one, which you have been polite about for weeks.

Somebody bigger than you lost their temper in front of you when you were small, and you saw what it did to the room. So you decided your own anger was the dangerous item.

Now it comes out fast and small over parking and dishes, and never at the person it belongs to. You have been aiming it at the wrong things for years.

Say the real one. Out loud, to the right face.

Look at the white in it. Real larimar webs in soft white patches, like turtle shell, around the blue.

Dyed howlite webs black and thin, and it is what most cheap larimar actually is. The real material is expensive and always has been.

Taurus, you distrust anything shiny at a price that seems kind, and there is a reason for that.

You saved up for something once and it turned out to be nothing. It was not the money that stayed with you.

It was being the sort of person that happens to. So you check twice now, and you still feel a bit ridiculous for wanting a beautiful thing at all.

Look for the white webbing. Then decide.

Larimar does not survive sunlight. The blue goes, slowly and permanently, and no drawer brings it back afterwards.

Salt and long soaking dull it too. It is soft enough to pick up a scratch off a zip on your coat.

Gemini, you can talk about anywhere on earth and you have never said what home costs you.

You worked out young that a funny version of a bad thing keeps everybody comfortable and keeps you out of trouble. So you got fluent in it.

There is something you are angry about that you have only ever told as an anecdote. Everybody laughed. You went home and it was still hot.

It has not gone anywhere. Hot things do not.

Larimar is pectolite, normally a dull white mineral nobody looks at twice. Copper is the only reason this material came out blue.

One valley in Barahona has all of it. There is no second source and there never has been.

Cancer, one person is the whole reason a stretch of your life had colour in it, and you never told them.

You kept a house calm before you were ten, and it was not a job anybody offered you. You took it because somebody had to.

So the anger got filed somewhere quiet and it is still there. You can feel exactly where it sits when you lie down at night.

That is not weakness. That is a bill nobody ever paid.

Somebody drops white howlite into blue dye and sells it as larimar, because the real thing is scarce and costs what scarce things cost.

The tell is the veining. Dyed howlite runs black spiderweb lines. Larimar makes soft white cells around the blue.

Leo, there are cheaper versions of you everywhere and you have started to feel like one.

You were the bright one early, and bright came with a condition nobody wrote down, which was that you would not be difficult with it. You kept the deal.

So when something genuinely upset you last month, you did the warm version at dinner and everybody went home happy. You drove back furious and could not have said why.

You could tell one person. Pick the one who has never needed you cheerful.

It formed inside gas bubbles in volcanic rock, filling the empty spaces as fluids moved through. The blue is copper, sitting where it happened to be.

The mine is one hillside in Barahona and it is not getting any bigger. What comes out of it is all there is.

Virgo, there is only one of you and you have been comparing yourself to a category.

You were the one at home who caught things early, and catching them kept the house from tipping over. Nobody said thank you and nobody said stop.

Somebody said something to you in April that you have not addressed. You have reorganised two cupboards and answered every email instead. Neither of those was the thing.

The thing is still sitting in April. Go and get it.

Hold it up to a window and you can see the structure, fine threads running out from the middle like the inside of a shell.

Do not leave it there. Sunlight takes the blue out of larimar and the loss is permanent.

Libra, everything in your life runs out from one thing that happened, and you never traced it back.

You grew up where a raised voice meant something was about to break, so you learned the true sentence is the expensive one. You got good at the other kind.

There is a person you are still being lovely to about a thing they did. They think it is fine. You have known for a month that it is not.

They do not know. That is not the same as being forgiven.

Larimar cannot take salt, cannot take soaking, and cannot take a summer of daylight. It looks solid and it is soft enough to mark with a key.

None of that shows on the day you buy it. It shows a year later, paler.

Scorpio, you have been asked to keep your voice down about this for a long time.

Somebody once reacted badly to you being honest, and rather than the honesty being the problem, you decided the volume was. You have been adjusting ever since.

You say the true thing so quietly that people hear it as a mood. Then they tell you that you are hard to read.

You were not being difficult. You were being careful with people who never noticed.

The Atlantis stone name came out of Edgar Cayce's readings, and it got attached to larimar long after the stone turned up again in the seventies.

The truth is smaller and better. It is pectolite off one hillside in the Dominican Republic, blue because of copper.

Sagittarius, you come from one small place and you have spent your whole life proving you are not from there.

You were told no for years by people who never said why, so no started meaning somebody trying to hold you down. You went anyway, every single time.

The one you keep going past is a person telling you calmly that something you do hurts them. You hear it as a fence and step over it.

It was not a fence. It was somebody staying.

Some pale larimar gets heated to try to lift the blue. It usually comes out duller, which is the sort of detail that never reaches a label.

Resin composites and dyed magnesite fill out the rest of the cheap end. The real material has never once been cheap.

Capricorn, you count what got done, and being upset does not appear anywhere on that list.

Somebody at home measured people out loud by what they produced, and you were young enough to take it as arithmetic rather than opinion.

So a feeling with no task attached to it gets filed as noise. Something has been sitting hot in your chest for weeks. You have been pleasant about it the whole time.

Being pleasant is not the same as being finished.

This filled empty gas pockets in old lava, slowly, as fluid moved through the rock. Copper got into it and turned it the colour of shallow sea.

One province in one country has ever produced it. When that hillside is finished, that is the end of larimar.

Aquarius, you have a limited supply of one particular kind of patience and you spend it on people who do not know it runs out.

You worked out young that explaining a thing stops it getting to you. It was true, and it saved you more than once.

You have a clear calm account of why somebody treated you badly. You have never once said out loud that it made you angry. You skipped straight to understanding them.

Understanding turned up early. Go back for the other part.

Turn it over in your hand tonight and find the white. It sits in soft cells around the blue, the way a turtle shell divides up.

Then put it back in the drawer. A bright windowsill takes the blue out for good.

Pisces, you feel it the moment somebody is off with you, and then you go looking for the reason it might be your fault.

You said you were upset once as a child and got told you were too sensitive, by somebody whose opinion counted. You took the note.

Now the hurt arrives on time. You spend the next two hours arguing yourself out of it. By bedtime you have decided you overreacted.

You never overreacted. Whose voice is that, talking you down?