The Ocean Rat and The Steel Dragon

The Ocean Rat sees someone who teaches them something. The Steel Dragon, looking back, sees somewhere to put what they make. 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 Dragon 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 Ocean Rat brings Water, which The Steel Dragon's day pillar carries none of, and The Steel Dragon brings Earth and Metal, which The Ocean 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 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.