Cordial

Raspberry red straight out of the word cor — the heart, warm before it is polite.

Rhodolite Garnet · The Law of Patronage

Family: Garnet — a pyrope-almandine blend
Hardness: 7–7.5 on the Mohs scale
Colour: Raspberry to rose red, bright and clear
Signature: Named from the Greek for rose-stone; first found in North Carolina

The stone read as the word

Rhodolite is what happens when two garnets grow into one another: the dark iron red of almandine lightened by the fiery pyrope until the colour reads as raspberry. It is a mixture that came out warmer than either parent.

Cordial comes from cor, the heart — the beginning of love, not the end of manners. This is the stone of a warm greeting that costs the greeter something.

What it is carried for

Carried when warmth must arrive before etiquette does.
Held so nothing passes through her hands and comes out the same size.