Mahogany Obsidian

This is not a crystal. It is glass. The lava was moving too fast to build any structure, so it froze mid-change.

The red-brown clouds are iron that stopped where it stood the second the flow ended. Nothing inside it ever finished.

Aries, you would rather abandon a thing than watch yourself be slow at it.

Something knocked the confidence out of you. You do not talk about it. You went straight back to work and let everyone assume you bounced.

You have been repairing it privately ever since, and you keep a running clock on how long it is taking. The clock is the cruel part. Nobody set that deadline but you.

Unfinished is not the same as failed.

Thick lava full of silica cooled faster than it could crystallise and locked as glass. The iron in it never had time to gather properly, which is where the red-brown came from.

It is still glass. It chips on the edges, and a broken one cuts.

Taurus, you want to know a thing is solid before you put weight on it.

You put weight on something once that was not solid. It went out from under you in a way you have never described out loud to anybody.

You test the floor of every room before you walk across it. People call that slow. It is what somebody does after they have already been on the ground once.

Hold a thin edge up to a lamp tonight. Real glass glows red.

Hold a thin edge of it up to a lamp. The brown goes red and lights through. Red jasper next to it stays flat and dead.

That glow is the tell that this is volcanic glass. It is lava that cooled too fast to become anything with a structure inside it.

Gemini, you can explain your own situation beautifully and you have not moved an inch.

Somewhere young you learned that being quick got you approval, and that being honest got you a conversation you did not want.

So you got very fast. You can turn the worst week of your life into a story that makes a table laugh. Everyone at the table goes home thinking you are fine.

What would you say if the joke was not available?

Somebody tumbled the sharp off this so it would be safe in a pocket. Left alone, obsidian breaks into edges that cut.

The stone underneath is lava that cooled too fast to finish. The red-brown clouds are iron caught halfway.

Cancer, you smoothed your own edges long before anybody asked you to.

You worked out very early which version of you kept the house calm. You have been running that version ever since, mostly without noticing.

It made you easy to have around, and tired in a way that sleep does not fix. The people who love you love someone who has been filed down. They have no idea there was more.

Not everything sharp about you was a problem.

Obsidian survives water, salt and years on a shelf without changing at all. What it does not survive is a drop onto a hard floor.

It chips. It is glass, and the fresh break cuts. That has been true since the lava stopped moving.

Leo, you are very hard to knock over and very easy to chip.

One offhand comment from the right person can take a whole day off you. You would never admit that to the person who said it.

So you go big and warm and unbothered in public, and do the actual damage later, on your own. Everybody thinks you are made of something tougher. You let them, because the alternative is being handled.

You could tell one person the truth this week.

There is no crystal in this at all. It is glass, frozen out of lava that never got the time to organise itself.

The red-brown is iron oxide caught mid-move. Nothing in it ever finished forming, and nothing in it ever will.

Virgo, you have decided that you do not count until you are finished.

Somebody praised your results and never your effort, over and over, at the exact age you were working out what you were for.

So you hold everything back until it is presentable. Half-done work and half-done feelings and half-done sentences all go in a drawer. Most of your actual life is in that drawer.

Take one unfinished thing out of the drawer tonight and leave it on the table.

The lava that made this was too thick and too fast. It set as glass before a single crystal could start, and the iron in it stopped mid-drift and stained the whole thing red-brown.

Everything about it is a record of not being given long enough. It still cuts if it breaks.

Libra, something in you stopped mid move years ago and set exactly where it was.

You learned in a house where the mood could turn that the wrong sentence had consequences for everyone, not only for you.

You run every option past that memory first, and from outside it looks like dithering. It is not dithering. You are doing damage control for a room that stopped being dangerous years ago.

You are allowed to answer for yourself now.

Turn it slowly under a lamp and watch the edge light up red. That glow means glass, not stone.

It came from lava that cooled too fast to become anything with a proper structure. The brown clouds are iron that never got to finish.

Scorpio, you know exactly what happened to you and you have never once said it in a full sentence.

You handled it. That is the word you use for it. You handled it at the time, alone, at an age when you should not have had to.

You make people work out the shape of it from the outside. They read what you avoid and when you go quiet. Most of them give up.

Who would you trust with the whole sentence?

Somebody polished this and set it in a tray beside goldstone, which is manmade glass with copper flecks in it. This one is real glass, but a volcano made it.

Fast lava, no time to crystallise, iron frozen into red-brown clouds. It chips, and a chipped edge cuts.

Sagittarius, you have never wanted a thing explained to you before you tried it.

Somebody spent your childhood forecasting the crash. You got the risk assessment before you got the encouragement, every single time.

So you stopped asking permission and you have not asked since. It has taken you places most people only look at online. You keep moving before anyone gets the chance to disappoint you.

Somebody would have stayed.

This has sat through water, salt and centuries without altering. Obsidian is chemically dull that way, and it does not care what you keep it in.

One knock on a tiled floor and it chips. It is glass. That has never stopped being true.

Capricorn, you are extremely durable and nobody has ever asked what that has cost.

You became the reliable one so young that you cannot remember choosing it. Somebody in that house needed a person who did not fall over, so you were that person.

It worked. You are still the one everybody calls. There is no version of you in anyone's head that gets to be having a bad year.

You are allowed to chip.

Call it a crystal and you are wrong. It is glass with no internal order at all, from lava that set before anything inside could form.

The red-brown is iron caught in the act. It never got where it was going.

Aquarius, you can account for yourself in perfect detail and it has not moved you one step.

You worked out young that being the one who understands is safer than being the one who needs things. So you took the analyst's chair and never left it.

You can name your own pattern faster than any friend can. You have named it out loud at two in the morning more than once. Naming it has never once been the same as being through it.

What would you do if you stopped explaining?

Lava came up thick and cooled in a hurry, too fast for anything inside it to take a shape. What it became instead was glass with iron clouded through it.

Nothing in it ever finished. It is also brittle, and a broken edge is sharp.

Pisces, you have been halfway through something for a long time and you keep apologising for it.

Somewhere along the way you got the idea that other people are further along than you. That they have a plan and you have a mood.

So you keep quiet about where you actually are. You say you are getting there. Nobody has noticed, because you are so good at asking about them instead.

Tell one person tonight where you actually are.