Ruby in Zoisite

Find the pink patches and look at their edges. If some of them have six flat sides, that is a real ruby crystal sitting in the green.

It grew there. Nobody set it in and nobody dyed the green around it.

Aries, the loud red part of you gets all the attention and the quiet green part does all the work.

Somebody made a fuss of you the first time you were good at something. That feeling is still the one you are chasing.

So a long unglamorous stretch reads as failure. You leave, and you call it needing a challenge. What you were never taught is how to be good at something quietly.

This ruby never left the rock. It is still a ruby.

Deep underground, heat and pressure cooked an aluminium rich rock for a very long time. Two things grew in it at once, green zoisite and red corundum.

Corundum is the mineral we call ruby. Both of them are genuine, and the shop still prices it like a novelty.

Taurus, you stopped trusting anything cheap and shiny, and the reason has a face.

Somebody was warm and quick and certain once, and you believed them. What it cost you took years to finish arriving.

Now you go slowly with everybody and people think you are hard work. You are not hard work. You are checking for the six flat sides.

Take your time. Nothing good has ever needed you to hurry.

Dyed quartzite gets sold as this. So do glass composites, green with red blobs pressed into them.

They cannot fake the shape of it. Real ruby grows in six sided crystals and the fakes never have them.

Gemini, you keep the soft one and the sharp one in the same body and introduce whichever suits the room.

You found out at about twelve that being funny stops a room getting difficult. It worked on teachers, on your family, on everybody since.

So the plain sentence never gets out, not once, not to anybody. You do a very good version of the worst year of your life. People say how well you are handling it.

You are not handling it. You are narrating it.

It wears unevenly, because two very different hardnesses are stuck in the same stone. The green scratches and the red does not.

So an old piece is glassy in the pink parts and dull everywhere else. The stone shows exactly where it has been handled.

Cancer, one part of you takes every mark and the rest is untouched, and only you know which is which.

You were the barometer in your house. You knew from the sound of the front door what kind of night it was going to be, and you were maybe eight.

That reading never stopped. It is why crowds cost you more than they cost other people. You go home early and cannot explain it properly.

Go home early. You do not owe anybody the explanation.

What this actually is: green zoisite with real ruby in it and black flecks of a third mineral. All three grew together in one rock.

The ruby is almost always too clouded to cut, so it never leaves. It is not a lesser ruby, it is one that stayed where it was made.

Leo, the bright part of you and the dull part grew together and you keep trying to sell them apart.

Being the bright one got you something you needed at about six. Attention, or quiet, or a parent who was easier when you were on form.

So it became automatic. You can tell me how everyone at Saturday's dinner was really doing. You have no idea how your own Tuesday went.

Not everything good has to be cut out and sold.

Look at a piece that has been handled for years. The green has gone dull and the pink patches are still glassy, because they are far harder.

Nothing was done to it to make that happen. Time and pockets did it, and it is the most honest wear you will find in a shop.

Virgo, you have two things happening at once and you keep apologising for the louder one.

There was something you could not solve. Somebody's illness, somebody's leaving, a thing that had already happened.

So you did the forms and the phone calls and the lifts to appointments. All of it helped. None of it was the thing you actually wanted to say.

The sentence is still waiting.

Two minerals grew side by side in the same rock, under heat and weight, over a length of time nothing living saw. Neither one got out of the other's way.

Green and red are almost never found together like this. Nothing was arranged, and nobody has ever managed to fake the six sided shapes.

Libra, you have been getting out of somebody's way for so long that you think it is love.

You were raised where a cross word could ruin a weekend. So you learned to find the version of the truth that keeps everyone at the table.

People take that as being easy company. It is labour. You have been running the room since you were small and nobody has offered to help.

Would anyone notice if you stopped?

Somebody works out you can dye quartzite green, press red into it and sell it under this name. They never get the six sided outlines right.

The genuine thing looks worse. Patchy, uneven and half hidden, with the best of it buried where nobody can polish it.

Scorpio, the red in you got called unusable by somebody who only ever wanted a clean stone.

It was said by a person who found you inconvenient. Not cruel, just tired of the size of what you brought into the room.

You believed it, because you were young and they were the adult. Now you check every true thing against what it will cost before it leaves your mouth.

The best of it is still in there.

It survives water, salt and years of being carried about. What it does not survive is a polishing wheel, because the soft and hard parts wear at completely different rates.

So most pieces are left rough. This is one of the few stones the trade cannot really improve.

Sagittarius, you have kept the fierce one and the calm one in the same body and told nobody they were both yours.

The first rule you broke was somebody's fear with a rule painted on it. You were right, and being right that early turned out to be expensive.

Now every caution sounds like that one. You have walked out of rooms you should have stayed in and called it freedom.

Some of them were the right rooms.

Strip it back and this is a metamorphic rock. Cooked aluminium rich stone that grew ruby and zoisite together at depth.

The ruby in it will never be a ring. It is too clouded to cut, so it stays, working as part of something instead of being sold on its own.

Capricorn, you quietly settled for being part of something instead of being wanted on your own.

You were needed before you were asked. Somebody in your family could not hold their end and you were the one who could.

You got approval for it, so you kept it up. Now a day only counts if it made something, and the years you spent holding a house together are on no list.

Being part of it counts. Nobody has to cut you out.

Put it under a light and find the black flecks. That is a third mineral, growing in the same rock as the green and the red.

None of it was designed. It is three minerals that happened to be in one place under one pressure, and that is the whole beauty of it.

Aquarius, you stay on good terms with people who cannot stand each other and it is heavier than you make it look.

Somebody at home was unpredictable, so you learned to read the weather in advance. It was the cleverest thing a child in that house could have done.

It never turned off. You can explain your own year to a friend, causes and all, from a slight distance. Then you notice you felt nothing while you said it.

What happens if you stay in the room?

Deep underground one rock got hot enough and squeezed hard enough that two minerals grew in it at once. Green zoisite and real ruby, side by side.

The ruby is nearly always too clouded to cut out. It spent everything becoming itself and then stayed put.

Pisces, the best thing in you is the part people keep telling you is not usable.

You were called sensitive in the tone people keep for a fault. It came from somebody who found life easier when you doubted yourself.

So you check in on everyone and you apologise for taking up room. Meanwhile you are the one who noticed, and nobody thanks the person who noticed.

You have been fine for about two years now.