The Diamond Goat and The Mountain Rat

The Diamond Goat sees someone who looks after them. The Mountain Rat, looking back, sees someone who pulls unexpected things out of them. These are not the same thing, and that gap is the most useful fact on this page: each of you is having a different experience of the same relationship. Most friction between these two charts starts there rather than in anything either of you does.

Goat and Rat rub. This is the quiet kind of friction: nothing dramatic, just a low, persistent mismatch in pace or priority that both of you will find hard to name.

The Diamond Goat brings Metal, which The Mountain Rat's day pillar carries none of, and The Mountain Rat brings Water, which The Diamond Goat's carries none of. The exchange runs both ways, which tends to hold up longer than a one-directional one — neither of you is only the giver.

Neither day pillar carries Wood and Fire. A shared absence is harder to work with than a mismatch, because there is nobody in the pairing to notice it: these are qualities the two of you will consistently underrate in each other and in yourselves.