The Mountain Dragon and The Steel Monkey

The Mountain Dragon sees somewhere to put what they make. The Steel Monkey, looking back, sees someone who teaches them something. 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.

Dragon and Monkey belong to the same three-branch alliance. Apart, neither of you completes it; together you hold two thirds of it. Something becomes available in this pairing that is not available to either of you alone — and it stays latent until you are actually in the same room.

The Mountain Dragon brings Earth, which The Steel Monkey's day pillar carries none of, and The Steel Monkey brings Metal, which The Mountain Dragon'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, Fire, and Water. 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.