Rainbow Obsidian

What this actually is: glass. Lava cooled so fast that nothing inside got to finish growing, except tiny rods of iron mineral frozen part-grown in flat layers.

The rainbow comes off those layers. It is not sprayed on, and a coated fake gives you colour from every angle, even on a broken edge.

Aries, you have four half-finished things in a drawer and you can name every one.

You got told you were brilliant at ten. Brilliant, not hardworking.

So the first day something got difficult, you read it as proof you had picked wrong. Now you have a drawer of half-finished things and you do not open it. The rods in this glass never finished either.

Unfinished is not the same as wasted.

It takes water and salt without a mark, because glass does not care. Drop it and it chips into curved flakes with edges that can cut you.

The sheen cannot be washed off. It sits inside the stone, and that is the whole difference between this and coated glass on a market stall.

Taurus, you learned to distrust anything cheap and shiny, and somebody taught you that lesson personally.

You bought the story once. Somebody was warm and quick and certain, and you handed over more than money.

Now you take your time with everyone and people call it stubborn. It is not stubborn. You are checking whether the shine goes all the way through.

Turn it under a lamp tonight. That is the only test that works.

This glass had no time at all. The lava froze before a single crystal could finish, and everything inside it stopped part-grown.

The rods that did start are why it throws green and magenta. Stopping early is the reason it is beautiful, which no shop ever puts on the card.

Gemini, you can be interesting from any angle, and you never let anybody stand still long enough to see the black.

Being quick got you out of trouble young. A joke ended an argument, a good line got you liked, and it kept working.

So the flat sentence never gets said. You are funny about the worst week of your life and everybody laughs. Then you go home and nobody knows.

The plain answer is still in there.

A cutter had to guess. The sheen lies in one flat plane inside the block, and only a cut along it lets the colour out.

Guess wrong and the same stone is plain black for good. Nobody at the shop tells you how close yours came to being nothing.

Cancer, there is one angle where all of you shows and you have never handed anybody the map.

You could tell from a doorway how an evening was going to go. Somebody's voice went flat and you started managing it before you were tall enough to reach the kettle.

So you take people in small doses now, and you call it being tired. It is not tiredness. It is a child who did a job nobody thanked her for.

You were not born watchful. You were trained.

Hold it under one lamp and tilt it. Green arrives, then magenta, then nothing, because the sheen only exists at certain angles.

Under a flat grey sky it is a black stone. That is how you tell it from coated glass, which shines from every side.

Leo, you have worked out the exact angle people like and you stand there all evening.

You worked out early that when you were bright, the house was easier. So you got bright on demand.

It became the thing people book you for. Now you can name what everybody in a group needed last Friday. You cannot name one thing you wanted.

Somebody should have asked you first.

This is glass, not a crystal. There was no time for one, so the lava set with everything inside it half made.

Those half made rods are the only reason it has any colour. The shop sells the rainbow and never mentions it is built out of things that stopped.

Virgo, you have several unfinished things inside you and you only ever mention the finished ones.

One year the real thing was out of your hands entirely. So you got the kitchen spotless and the paperwork straight. It gave you somewhere to put your hands.

It still does. Now a hard week arrives and you deep clean a cupboard. That is not silly, it is just not the same as being held.

Ask for the second thing.

It lives through water, salt, sunlight and years on a shelf. What ruins it is a bad angle.

Cut across the layers instead of along them and the rainbow never appears at all. The stone spends its whole life looking plain.

Libra, the whole of you only shows at one angle, and you never turn anybody towards it.

In your house an argument did not last ten minutes. It lasted three days of a certain quiet, and you were always the one who ended it.

So you got very fast at finding the answer nobody would go cold about. Everybody thinks you cannot decide. You decide constantly, and always in their favour.

What would you pick if nobody had to like it?

Nothing in here got to finish. The lava cooled so fast that the crystals inside froze part-grown, in flat layers, and then it was over.

Those unfinished layers are the rainbow. It has been carrying an interrupted thing since the day it set.

Scorpio, the colour people love in you comes from the parts that never got to finish.

It was probably said kindly. Somebody at a kitchen table telling you that you feel things too hard, and you were young enough to believe them.

So the real answer goes through a check first, to see what it will cost. People say you are hard to know. You are not hard to know, you are just careful about who gets the angle.

Black from the front. Turn it.

Somebody sawed this block and hoped. The sheen sits in one flat plane inside, and only a cut along it lets the colour out.

Guess wrong and you have a black stone and a wasted week. The shop only ever shows you the ones that came out right.

Sagittarius, the colour in you only shows at one angle and you have never told anyone where to stand.

Somebody told you no once, and the no was really about their own small life. You saw straight through it.

After that you stopped sorting the honest warnings from the frightened ones. Some of the doors you went through cost you people you have not missed yet. You will.

Not everyone who slowed you down was scared of you.

Take it to a lamp and turn it slowly. The colour comes and goes, and under a dull sky it is just a black stone.

That coming and going is how you know it is real. Coated glass shines from every side, even where it is broken.

Capricorn, on a flat grey week you decide you were never anything much.

You were praised for what you carried before you were old enough to choose. So you carried more, and nobody ever suggested you stop.

The years you spent holding people together sit on no list you would call an achievement. Rest goes in the wasted pile. So does most of what actually made you.

The colour was always there in the dark.

Take the name off and this is volcanic glass. No lattice, no crystal, nothing in it that finished forming.

The rainbow comes from rods of iron mineral frozen mid growth in flat sheets. Not a coating, and not something anybody has to take on faith.

Aquarius, you have a lot of things in you that stopped halfway, and the best part of you is made of them.

You noticed early how the adults actually worked. Who was performing, who was frightened, who was being pleasant about something awful.

Knowing that kept you safe and it put glass between you and the room. Now you can explain your own life to a friend in perfect order. You feel almost nothing while you do it.

Being right about people is not the same as being close to them.

Water does not touch it. Salt does not touch it, and years on a shelf do not either.

One knock on a hard floor and it goes, in curved flakes with edges sharp enough to cut. Tough about almost everything, and then not.

Pisces, nothing inside you got to finish forming, and the colour people love came from that.

Other people hear a bad story and set it down. You take it home and it is still in the room with you at two in the morning, wearing their voice.

Somebody told you that was a weakness, and it suited them to say so. So you get in first now. You call yourself too much before anybody else can.

You are allowed to hand it back.