Snowflake Obsidian

Hold a thin edge up to a lamp. The black goes brown and glows. That is glass, not stone.

Lava cooled too fast to make crystals. It froze the way it was, mid-motion, and stayed like that.

Aries, you froze mid-motion once and nobody noticed, because you kept moving.

Starting is the part that feels alive. The middle has no applause in it, so you keep finding new beginnings and calling it drive.

Somewhere back there a person only looked up when you were winning. You built a whole engine to keep them looking.

The white flowers grew later, inside the dark, while nothing appeared to be happening.

Nothing was the wrong word for it.

It is glass. Not a mineral, not a crystal, just lava that cooled too fast to organise itself into anything.

The white snowflakes are the only crystals in it, and they are still forming, slowly, inside the dark body.

Taurus, you stopped trusting anything that arrives finished.

Somebody sold you a story once and you bought all of it. Not a small story either. You went home certain, and you can still put that day in order hour by hour.

Now you want to touch the thing first. You want a name, a receipt, a person who will still be there in a year.

People call you hard to please. You are a woman who already paid for her caution once.

Nothing here needs your trust today. It needs your hands.

Obsidian survives water, salt and sun. What it does not survive is a knock. It chips, and a fresh chip comes off sharp enough to cut.

People made blades out of this. Same material, same edge, no difference in kind.

Gemini, small good things have already started in you and you keep describing them as nothing much.

It started as a way to be worth keeping around. There was a table, and the true quiet thing you said got talked over. The clever version got laughed at.

So you got very good at the clever version. Now everybody knows that one and almost nobody has met the tired one.

The plain answer was always enough. You have simply never been in a room safe enough to test it.

Where is that room, and who is in it?

Some beads sold as snowflake obsidian have the flowers printed on. Clean circles, evenly spaced, all the same size.

Real ones sit in three dimensions with feathery edges, because they actually grew there. A printed one had its pattern decided for it.

Cancer, the tidy version of your family story is printed on, and you can feel the real one underneath.

The steady one. The one who is fine. You got that job in a house where somebody else's weather ran the room, and being fine was how you kept the temperature down.

It was never a flood that wore you out. It was the same tone at breakfast for years, and nobody in that room thought it counted as anything.

It counted. You are allowed to say so out loud.

Look at yours. The edges should be soft.

The snowflakes were not there when the lava froze. They started later, tiny crystals gathering inside the glass over spans nobody was around to time.

The stone is still doing it now. Slowly turning from glass into rock while it sits on a shelf.

Leo, the best parts of you arrived years after anybody was still watching.

You know who is uncomfortable and who needs the joke and who is about to leave early. You learned it young, watching one face to find out what kind of day it was going to be.

Then a friend asks how you are, and there is a pause, because you have to go and check.

Nothing about you is finished either. You just have no audience for that part.

Go and check tonight. Write down what you find.

Turn one over under a lamp. The white patches polish duller than the glass around them, and people send them back thinking it is a fault.

It is not a fault. It is two different materials sitting in one body, which is exactly what this stone is.

Virgo, something has started growing in you and you are calling it a flaw.

The drawer gets sorted. The inbox gets cleared. The one conversation that would change your year is exactly where it was in March.

It made sense once. There was a stretch when the only things you could control were small and close. You controlled them perfectly and it kept you standing.

The small things were never the problem. Some part of you already knows that.

So what are you cleaning around?

Shops sell dalmatian stone as this, and it is the exact inverse. Black spots in a pale grainy body, instead of white flowers inside black glass.

Backlight a thin edge. Real obsidian glows brown. The other one stays flat and dead.

Libra, the peace you keep is for somebody who is not even in the room.

You know where you want to eat and who is bad for you and what you would do with a free Saturday. You just do not say it, because there was a house where saying it made everything go quiet.

You were the one who fixed the quiet. Nine years old, reading faces, making the joke.

So you got easy, and easy is a lonely thing to be from the inside.

Pick the restaurant this week.

It is not a crystal. It is glass that cooled too fast to become one, and the white flowers are the only part that ever managed to organise itself.

They grew in the dark, with the rest of the stone still solid black around them.

Scorpio, something is slowly crystallising inside you and you can date the start of it.

Probably in those exact words. Probably at a table, and you can still name the year and what you were wearing.

So you learned to hand people a smaller version and keep the rest. You are not bitter about it. You are just tired of doing the sorting every single time.

Nothing in this stone grew out in the light. It all grew in the black part.

That is not a wound. That is the method.

The lava froze in seconds. Everything after that has been slow, tiny crystals gathering inside the glass over spans nobody was around to count.

Fast once, then patient for the rest of it. The stone did both.

Sagittarius, the small good things have already started in you and you keep calling them nothing.

Somebody spent your childhood listing what you would never manage, and you built a life out of proving them wrong. It worked. It also means you have never left a thing early, because leaving would feel like agreeing with them.

There are rooms you stayed in for years out of spite dressed up as commitment.

You can put something down. That is not the same as being told you were right about it.

Nothing to prove tonight.

Obsidian is fine in water and fine in salt and fine in the sun. What gets it is a knock on a hard surface, and a fresh chip comes off sharp.

Nothing wore it down slowly. It went in one moment, on one day, after being fine for years.

Capricorn, you were fine for years and then one afternoon you were not, and you still call that a failure.

If a day made nothing you file it under wasted. Rest goes in that file. So do the months you spent being the reliable one while your own life sat still.

You learned to earn your place before you learned to ask for one. There was a house where help was the only currency you had, and you got very good at spending it.

Put the stone somewhere it cannot fall. Then do the same for yourself.

Somebody prints these flowers onto cheap beads. Same circle, same size, spaced out neatly, because a machine cannot do feathery.

The real ones sit in three dimensions and go slightly duller when polished. That dullness is the proof.

Aquarius, you go duller the more you get polished for company, and that dullness is the honest part.

You can tell a friend exactly why her job is making her ill. Gently, in about four sentences, and you will be completely right. Your own situation is fog.

It is not a blind spot. It is where you are standing, and you have been standing there a long time.

Somebody would tell you if you let them. Who have you let that close?

The white came late. Tiny crystals started gathering inside the frozen glass long after the lava went still, and they are still gathering now.

Nothing about it is finished. The shop sells it as an object, and it is a process that happens to be sitting on a shelf.

Pisces, you are slowly turning into something sturdier, and nobody has offered you a door yet.

Other people's moods walk in without knocking, and you have spent your life being told to grow one, as though you were withholding a door on purpose.

So you leave things early. You go quiet on the drive home. You say you are tired because tired is a word people accept.

The softness is not the fault. Nobody ever helped you plan around it, which is a different problem entirely.

Choose the seat facing the door tonight.