Moonstone Quarry velvety and caressing

aw <3 hoping to make some acquaintances!

The sky was a deep, velvet blue, caught somewhere between dusk and nightfall, when the stars had not yet gathered the courage to show their faces, and the wind held its breath in the hollows. Aneira stood at the edge of the quarry. The stones beneath her paws were pale and quiet, brushed gold by the last amber streaks of sunlight slanting through the trees. She had returned here, guided less by thought than by instinct. Something about the meeting with Towhee had stirred embers long cooled; ghosts of ash and memory now drawn back to life: Asterism Grove.
She whispered the name in her mind like a prayer, or a curse. The landslide had taken many things, faces, futures, and the shape of a place she had once nearly called home. Aneira had fled before the dust had even settled, chasing the fear that if she stayed too long, she’d be buried under the grief of it all. But she had never truly forgotten.
Now, her paws moved carefully across the quarry’s uneven floor, skimming cracks and ridges carved by time and weight. A soft breeze stirred her fur, brushing the pale strands like ghost fingers, and her turquoise eyes traced the jagged walls as if they held answers. Her reflection flickered across shallow puddles left by old rains, distorted, distant.
She lowered her head, brushing her muzzle along a smooth outcrop streaked with age. This place had its own memory, silent but stubborn. And in that silence, she wondered what it had seen; if the earth, too, remembered every name once spoken above it.
With a slow breath, Aneira sat, letting dusk wrap around her shoulders like a shawl. She did not call for anyone. This moment was not meant to be shared. It was for the Grove, for the ones buried in stone and time. For what had been lost… and what might yet be reclaimed. The frostmaiden thought of Solharr now, how he did not give up on her and offered a home; she would remember it.
The stars began to appear, one by one. And still, she watched the quarry.