The Mountain Rat and The Starlight Ox

The Mountain Rat sees someone who looks after them. The Starlight Ox, 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.

Rat and Ox pair directly. This is the easiest kind of contact: agreement arrives before it is argued for, which is comfortable and occasionally means neither of you tests an assumption.

The Mountain Rat brings Water, which The Starlight Ox's day pillar carries none of, and The Starlight Ox brings Fire, which The Mountain Rat'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 Metal. 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.