Red Jasper

Hold a torch behind it. Nothing comes through, because the red goes all the way in and no clear part of it is left.

That is the test. Carnelian glows orange, and a dyed stone shows its colour sitting in the cracks instead of through the body.

Aries, the anger is not a mood, it is the whole rock, and you have been managing it alone.

You were fast, and fast got praised. Somebody clapped for the first two weeks of everything you ever did.

So you learned to leave before the boring part, and you call it restlessness. It is not restlessness. Nobody taught you that carrying on unwatched is the actual skill.

The red went all the way through in the dark.

This is quartz. The grains are too small to see, and iron oxide stained the whole thing red, right the way through.

It is rust. The same red as old brick, and no shop puts that on the label.

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

Somebody sold you a good story once, years ago, and you believed all of it. They were warm about it, and they were quick, and you paid in something you cannot earn back.

Now you handle everyone slowly and people call it stubborn. It is not stubborn. You are just a woman who is checking the colour is not only in the cracks.

Rust is honest. It says what happened.

Water, salt, sun, soap, a drop on a tiled floor. None of it marks this stone.

Some sellers dye grey jasper and sell it as this. Hold a light to it and the fake shows its colour pooled in the cracks.

Gemini, the thing you are angry about goes all the way through you and you keep discussing it lightly.

Plain never got you anything. Quick did, and a good line got you liked at eleven, and it has been working ever since.

So nobody has heard the flat sentence in years. You are entertaining about the worst month of your life and everyone laughs. Then you drive home and it is still only yours.

Say one boring true thing this week.

Silica rich water soaked into fine mud and cracked rock and hardened there, slowly. Iron came with it and stained the whole thing red.

Egyptians cut it into funeral amulets and called it the blood of Isis. It went into the wrappings, to hold something steady for a very long time.

Cancer, something soaked into you in that house and it has set into everything you are now.

You could hear the mood of a house from the hallway. Somebody put the cutlery down a bit harder and you were already adjusting.

You were not born watchful, you got trained. Now you love people in small careful doses and call it being tired. You are tired, just not from that.

Nobody thanked the child for that job.

Somebody worked out you can dye grey jasper red and sell it for more. It happens, and it is not difficult.

The tell is where the colour sits. A dyed stone pools its red in the cracks, and a real one is stained right through the body.

Leo, you learned early that the brighter version sells, and it was not difficult.

When you were bright, the house got easier. You noticed that at about seven, and you have been doing it ever since, in every kitchen you walk into.

Now people book you for it. You come home from a good night knowing how everybody else is doing. You sit in the car with no idea about you.

Who asks you first?

Put it under a lamp and look at the veining. Grey quartz lines run through the red, and nobody arranged any of it.

Nothing was polished into this stone that was not already in it. The only thing anyone can do to red jasper is fake it.

Virgo, the anger goes all the way through you and you have been polite about it for weeks.

There was a stretch when the real problem was completely out of your hands. So you sorted a cupboard. You answered every email and got the floors done, and it gave your hands somewhere to be.

It still does. A hard week comes and you clean the oven. That is not silly, it is just not the same as being asked how you are.

Let somebody do one thing for you tonight.

Take the name off and this is rust in stone. Iron oxide sitting in quartz so fine that you cannot see a single grain.

Nothing was added and nothing was heated. The only lie ever told about red jasper is the dyed grey one sold beside it.

Libra, the anger is spread so fine through everything that you have never found a piece to point at.

In your house a disagreement did not end in ten minutes. It ended in three days of a particular quiet, and you were the one who broke it.

So you got quick at finding the answer nobody would go cold about. People think you cannot choose. You choose constantly, and it is always for them.

You are allowed one preference nobody has to approve.

It takes water, salt, sun and being dropped, and none of it shows. This is one of the toughest stones in the shop.

Which is why nobody ever asks whether it is all right. Hard to break gets treated as the same thing as not hurting.

Scorpio, you have taken far worse than that sentence and this is the one that stayed.

It was probably said gently. A partner, or your mother at a table, telling you that you feel things too hard.

You did not argue, you filed it. Now every real feeling goes through a check first, to see what it will cost.

People call that private. It is not private, it is a bill you learned to expect.

The problem was never the size of you.

Water carrying silica soaked into cracked rock and set there hard, over a stretch of time nothing living saw. Iron came along and stained it through.

It has been dropped, buried and dug up ever since and it does not care. The only thing that ruins it is somebody dyeing a cheaper stone to look like it.

Sagittarius, the anger is not a mood you are in, it goes all the way through, and you have never said so out loud.

Somebody told you no once when the no was really about them. Their fear, their small life, their opinion about what a girl gets to do.

You saw straight through it. Then you stopped sorting the honest warnings from the frightened ones. A few of the doors you went through cost you people.

Some of them were only trying to keep you.

Egyptians cut this into amulets and laid it in the wrappings of the dead. They called it the blood of Isis and wanted something that would hold for a very long time.

They picked it because it does not fail. Nobody chose red jasper for beauty, they chose it for endurance.

Capricorn, you were picked for how much you could hold and you took that as being loved.

You were loved for what you carried before anybody asked if you wanted the job. So you carried more, and it kept working, and no one suggested you stop.

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

Being hard to break is not the same as not hurting.

Hold it to a window with the light behind it. It stays black, because no clear part of this stone is left to shine through.

Carnelian would glow orange. That one test is the whole difference, and most sellers hope you never run it.

Aquarius, you have been solid for so many people that there is no part of you left for light to get through.

You were the one at the table who could tell what the adults were actually doing. It was useful and it was lonely, and nobody knew you were doing it.

That habit never switched off. You can lay out your own year like a case file, dates and causes in order. You feel almost none of it.

When did you last say it unedited?

This is not a gemstone, it is stained rock. Quartz too fine to see, soaked through with iron until it went the colour of old brick.

It is common and cheap and it will outlast nearly everything else you own. The shop marks it up anyway.

Pisces, you have survived far more than the people who describe you as delicate.

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

Somebody called that a weakness, and it suited them to call it that. So you get there first now, and you say dramatic about yourself before anyone else can.

Hold something heavy tonight. People have reached for this one when they needed weight.