Lammermoore.

I'm considering stones. I'm trying to make my hero translucent, you see; and a light has to shine through him as it were blank. Marble is so tired. Alabaster is too opague, to my mind, and somehow flaky: I think not so much caryatids as cornices (I know cornices are really stucco: but). Ivory is, well, bony, and I can only see them tusk-shaped. The only problem I have with pearl is they are sometimes freshwater, which is bad enough, or iridescent (I'm still shuddering over the organza of the Raffles Chorale girl's costume). Opals are fine in colour and texture, but they would come in pellets. My hero is not Oriental, so no jade, which is also inexorably green, though not in fact so: I've seen white, pink, orange, black: again, but. And then I run out of stones. Suggestions?

Okay I saw some pictures of Egyptian alabaster vases in the interim, and they are lovely: I shall reconsider. Also, I recall the Gawain-Poet's perle wythouten spot, and I think it very pleasaunte. Not in the least iridescent.