Serpentine

Serpentine started as rock from far below the ocean floor. Water worked into it over a very long time and turned it into something softer and green.

One hard fact first. The serpentine group includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos.

A polished carving is safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble it dry, and never breathe the dust.

Aries, you changed your name for yourself and half of them still use the old one.

You did the work. New job, new city, a different way of speaking to people. You did it fast, because you always do.

Then you go home at Christmas and somebody tells the old story at the table. You feel yourself getting shorter in the chair.

They are behind. You are not.

It is not jade. New jade, olive jade and Korean jade are all serpentine, and a steel knife scratches it while real jade shrugs the knife off.

The group also includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos. That is not a scare, it is the reason for the rule.

Polished carvings are safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble the raw stone dry, and never breathe the dust.

Taurus, you were loved for a version of you that somebody else named.

The steady one. The one who does not make a fuss. You were handed that at about twelve and you took it, because being useful was the surest way to be kept.

It is a good name and it is not the whole of you. There are wants in you that would surprise everybody at that table.

Say one of them out loud this week.

A lot of serpentine is dyed to deepen the green, and some is soaked with wax, then sold under a jade name it has no right to.

It formed when water worked into rock from deep below the ocean floor and changed it. What it never became is jade.

The serpentine group includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos. A polished piece is safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble it dry, and never breathe the dust.

Gemini, you have a slightly different name in every room you walk into.

It started as adaptation, and adaptation kept you safe in a house where the right answer changed depending on the mood.

Now you can be anybody's favourite in about eight minutes. You never get to stop deciding which one to be.

One room where you use one name. That is the whole ask.

Serpentine is soft. A steel knife marks it, and that softness is the quickest way to tell it from the jade it gets sold as.

It formed when water worked into rock far beneath the ocean floor and slowly turned it green.

The group includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos. Polished carvings are safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble it dry, and never breathe the dust.

Cancer, your family froze you at seventeen and has not updated the file since.

They still talk about the thing you were bad at then, and they hand you the same job at every gathering. You still take it, because correcting them feels like a fight you would rather not start.

So you go quiet and let it stand. Then you drive home and think of the sentence you should have said.

What would you have said?

Drag a steel knife across a hidden edge. Serpentine marks where real jade would not, which is how the jade name falls apart. It is that soft because water worked into rock far under the ocean floor and changed it.

One caution, always. The group includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos.

A polished piece is safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble it dry, and never breathe the dust.

Leo, you outgrew the loud one and everybody still books her.

You were funny and generous with attention, and it made you the person people wanted at things. It took years to notice it had become a booking.

You are quieter now and it worries them. Somebody asked last month if you were all right. They meant were you going to be fun again.

Being quiet is not a fault in you.

Serpentine was something else entirely before. Water worked into olivine-rich rock far beneath the ocean floor and, over a very long stretch, turned it into this.

The group it belongs to includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos.

Polished carvings are safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble the raw material dry, and never breathe the dust.

Virgo, you are still apologising for a person you have not been in six years.

You did something at twenty-four that you have gone over about four hundred times since. Everybody involved has moved on. You are the only one still holding the file open.

It stays open because somewhere young you learned that being sorry enough was how you got let back in. Nobody ever told you when it was finished.

It is finished. You can close it.

This is not jade and never was. New jade, olive jade and Korean jade are trade names for serpentine, and it is often dyed to deepen the green.

The serpentine group includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos.

A polished carving is safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble it dry, and never breathe the dust.

Libra, somebody fell in love with an earlier draft of you.

You have changed since then, quietly and properly, and they have not quite noticed. You keep doing the old version around them, because that is what they signed up for.

It is a strange kind of loneliness, being loved accurately for somebody you used to be. You will not fix it by getting smaller.

Let them meet the current one.

Somebody dyed a lot of this to make the green richer, waxed some of it, and put a jade name on the label. It is not jade.

Under the dye it is serpentine, made when water worked into rock below the ocean floor.

The group includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos. Polished pieces are safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble it dry, and never breathe the dust.

Scorpio, somebody put a word on you at school and you carry it still.

Weird, or intense, or too much, said once in a corridor by somebody whose name you can still say. You were young enough that it went in as a fact.

You have spent years proving it wrong to people who never heard it. Nobody in your life now would recognise the girl that word was aimed at.

That word was never a description. It was a guess.

Serpentine is soft enough that a steel knife marks it, which is the quickest way to catch the jade names it gets sold under.

It came from rock far below the ocean floor that water slowly changed into something else.

The group includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos. A polished carving is safe in your hand. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble the raw stone dry, and never breathe the dust.

Sagittarius, you moved a very long way to stop being called the old name.

It worked. Nobody where you live now knows the version of you that got laughed at, and you have built something real out of that clean start.

The catch is that you cannot go back. There are people at home who would love the person you became. You have never let them see her.

One visit. Bring the new one.

Hold it and it feels slightly greasy, and it sits warmer and lighter in the hand than jade does. That greasy feel is the tell.

It formed when water worked into rock far beneath the ocean floor and turned it soft and green over a very long time.

One rule that does not bend. The serpentine group includes chrysotile, white asbestos. Polished carvings are safe to hold.

Never saw, sand, drill or tumble it dry, and never breathe the dust.

Capricorn, you were handed a role at fifteen and nobody has renegotiated it since.

You became the reliable one because somebody had to be, and everybody quietly organised their lives around that being permanent. It is still running. Nobody has checked whether you still want it.

Contracts can be reopened. Even old ones.

Water worked its way into rock from far below the ocean floor and, across a stretch of time you cannot picture, turned it into something slick and green.

That group includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos.

Polished carvings are safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble raw serpentine dry, and never breathe the dust.

Aquarius, you asked one honest question at a family table and became the difficult one for life.

You were about sixteen. You noticed a thing nobody was saying and you said it, because it seemed obvious, and the room went cold in a way you have never forgotten.

You did not stop noticing. You just stopped saying it. You carry the accurate read of every room and give it to nobody.

You were right. That was the problem.

It is serpentine, not jade, however the label reads. Olive jade and new jade are sales names, and the green is often deepened with dye.

The serpentine group includes chrysotile, which is white asbestos.

A polished carving is safe to hold. Never saw, sand, drill or tumble it dry, and never breathe the dust.

Pisces, you still answer to a name given to you by a person who is not in your life any more.

They called you something small and fond, and it fitted then, and you liked being the one it was said to. Other people picked it up. It outlasted them by years.

So there is a whole part of your life where the name does not fit. You are still being addressed as somebody you were with a person who is gone.

You are allowed to ask for the other one.