"And there's pain." With a sudden movement she jabbed the chisel's tip into her finger and watched the drops of blood well up and fall. Traces of the colors swirled through the mixture like eddies in the river. There's fear." She stirred the powders roughly with one of the small chisels that still lay on the tray. "There's memory of loss and dreams unrealized.
"And jealousy." A dusting from a smaller jar.
"But there's vanity as well." A spoon from the second. "There's love that's true." Five large scoops of the first and the jasper thrust into the midst of it. With a sudden swift movement she took up one of the empty crucibles from the bench and started scooping minerals into it from the open jars. Loyalty can't be only a fishhook on a slender line it must be a thousand tiny stitches binding one heart to the other." How can there be honor without the pride in keeping it? What does love mean without the courage to follow it? Bravery without wisdom is folly. We're all of us impure mixtures and flawed gems." She snatched the jasper away and held it up. "It was never false, but it's never pure. "It isn't false," Jeanne countered with quiet intensity. Pure, perfect, flawless…and utterly false." "Red jasper to cure pains of the heart and ensure love returned. It was warm between her fingers and she could feel herself bending to the power it carried: softening, yearning. No hazy patches where the fibers were misaligned. Only one true red but it's the largest."Īntuniet picked up the crimson stone and held it against the light from the window to check the clarity. Two are something of a muddy brown you didn't say what you wanted done with them. "It was hard to clean the small ones completely. "I think this is all of them," Jeanne said. "What do we have?" Her voice creaked a little from long disuse. She felt, rather than saw, Jeanne standing at her side and looked up at last. Chair legs scraped across the stones, tearing the silence.
She paused in beginning to clear away the jars of materiae. When the tapping stopped, the silence echoed with her heartbeat. The corner of the room where Jeanne worked was ever in her awareness, tugging at the edges of her vision. Hunger was only driven away by the other ache. The click and tap of the tools could only be drowned out by the recited verses that enhanced the materiae as she measured and mixed. There were days when she became so lost in the work that hours passed without noticing.
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