Moonstone Quarry dragonspine

Dawn had not yet fully broken, only brushed the world in palest silver, the stars retreating one by one into the softening sky. The quarry lay in hushed stillness, its stone-carved hollows bathed in mist, and the pools glimmered faintly as forgotten mirrors catching their last glimpse of night.
Aneira moved like a shadow stirred by wind, deliberate and silent. Each step was careful, though not hesitant; the earth here held memory beneath its surface, and she did not wish to disturb it carelessly. The morning air clung damp to her pelt, curling faint wisps of steam from her breath.
She was looking for the fire man; @Solharr.
The name lingered behind her teeth, unspoken but heavy. She didn’t call out; not yet. Instead, she listened, trusting the stone to carry any sign of him: a scrape of claw, a breath shifting the air, the steady rhythm of familiar steps. The frostmaiden witnessed other truths in him; quieter ones. The ghost of warmth beneath all that frost.
Aneira paused beside one of the shallower pools, pale eyes sweeping across the hollow. The reflection that met her gaze was not her own; it was younger, soot-smudged and full of ash, just for a moment, until the wind scattered the illusion.

his shape emerged from the mist like something carved long ago and only now remembering how to walk.

solharr stepped down from the higher ridge, one broad paw after the next, steady as the tide and just as inevitable. the wind caught his coat—deep rust and stone-shadow—and tugged it westward. he did not rush. he did not need to.

her scent had reached him first. it clung to the quarry’s stone, to the water’s skin, sweet and cold like the rim of morning.

when he found her, she stood still as memory. her gaze drawn toward the pool, pale as snowmelt.

he stopped a few paces away.

aneira. her name left him like breath turned solid. not a question. not a greeting. recognition.

his single eye softened. there was no fire in it today. only smoke, and the steady warmth of embers that refused to die.

the stone woke for you, he rumbled. as did i.

Her posture softened as she heard his steady approach, the sound of his movement as familiar as the wind's whisper. The mist clung to his form as the remnants of an ancient dream, but there was no haste in his steps, no sign of urgency. The frostmaiden let the silence stretch between them, her gaze still fixed on the water, though it no longer held her attention as it had before.
When his voice met her ears, there was a shift; a pulse of something deep within her, a recognition of something she hadn’t quite realized she’d been waiting for. 
„Solharr,” she murmured, her voice a breath of sound, low but certain. Aneira turned slowly, though not fully, so that his presence lingered just outside the periphery of her vision. She could feel him there; his weight in the air, his unspoken steadiness.
„Is that so?” She smirked, the corner of her mouth lifting ever so slightly. „The stone has a mind of its own then.” Her gaze met his, pale eyes flashing with something like mischief. „I’ve had to adjust to it. It’s not quite like the softness of the forest.” Her paws shifted slightly beneath her, pressing deeper into the cool stone. Her fur, damp with the lingering fog, caught the morning light as she shifted her weight. There was a quiet acknowledgment in the way she moved, as though she could settle into the earth itself if only it would hold her.
She tilted her head slightly, watching him with a mix of amusement and something else; perhaps the very same embers that clung to his eyes, half-hidden, but burning just as fiercely. „And you? Have you been awake all this time, or have I dragged you from dreams of your own?” she asked, her voice a murmur that barely broke the quiet.

no dreams, he said at last, voice like gravel wet with snowmelt. it carried low, but true.

solharr stepped closer, the sound of his weight pressing into stone not unlike distant thunder, softened by time. the wind curled past them both—cold fingers raking through his cheeks, tousling hers. she was haloed in mist and dawnlight, and for a moment, she reminded him of things he could no longer name.

sleep comes... rarely now. he tilted his head, slow, a motion heavy with thought. his single eye held her pale one without flinching. less since we left the forest.

not an accusation. not regret. just fact.

the quarry had changed him. sharpened him. scraped at the quiet places inside his chest, until only the barest edges of warmth remained to be kindled. she must have seen that too—how still he sat when the others danced. how often he watched the sky, as though it owed him something.

but the stone holds memory, he said finally, nodding once to the pools at her feet. it remembers the weight of us. it does not forget. and it does not lie.

a pause. his voice dipped lower.
i don’t mind being awake when you are.

Aneira's gaze shifted from the pools at their feet to Solharr, her expression soft but unreadable. She had long since grown accustomed to the stillness of the night, the weight of silence pressing in on her as much as the stone beneath her paws. Her own nights had become increasingly restless, her mind unable to settle, the ache of what was lost and the pull of things unspoken often keeping her from sleep.
Her voice was low, almost a murmur as she answered, „Sleep... hasn't been kind to me, either.” She lifted her gaze to meet his, her turquoise eyes steady, though her words carried a quiet weight. „The quiet places inside... they get louder the more time passes.” She did not need to ask what kept him from sleep. She already knew. It was her, his wife, haunting the edges of his silence like a ghost with no name. Aneira could not fathom how anyone could walk away from him: a man carved from loyalty and fire, steady as mountain-root, capable of bearing the world on his back. And yet… perhaps there were reasons only the heart could understand. She tilted her head slightly, a quiet, private thought blooming behind her eyes. Wherever she is, Aneira mused silently in her mind, may the stars still watch over her.
The forstmaiden stepped closer, just enough to feel the shift in the air between them, and let the silence settle like the cool mist around them. It felt right, to be closer to him, his flame-born body. Her lips curved into a slight smirk as she looked up at him, her words laced with a quiet amusement: „I suppose it's a good thing we both prefer being awake, then. Doesn't feel quite so lonely.” Her gaze softened, a flicker of something deeper hiding behind her words, before she turned her attention back to the pools, the stillness of the stone, and the quiet echoes of the morning stretching out before them both. She wondered if he might come nearer too; though she would not ask. Let the silence decide for them, as it often did.

he listened.

he always listened. not the kind of man to fill silence for its own sake—solharr let her voice drift between them like the morning fog, settling deep into his chest, where memory and ache had long made a home.

the frostmaiden’s quiet confession met something wordless in him. something cracked, but not broken. something aching, but enduring. he felt it stir like coals under ash.

the quiet places speak louder than the wolves do, he murmured finally, his voice rough with the edge of long-kept grief. mine never sleep. they... sing of things i can't return to. a beat passed. then, with more weight: things i would not return to, even if i could.

there was no venom in it. no bitterness. only truth, shaped by time.

his eye drifted to her—closer now, soft and pale and quiet as snow at sunrise. she did not ask for closeness, but she allowed it. and that, in solharr’s world, was something far more sacred.

he took the final step. not rushed. not hesitant. close enough that her shoulder nearly brushed his chest, though he did not touch her.

no, he said lowly, a hint of something warmer, gentler threading beneath the weight of his words, not lonely at all.

and he stood there with her, fire and frost side by side, as the light broke at last across the quarry stone.

Aneira’s breath caught; only slightly, a subtle shift, barely there save for the way her lashes lowered just a beat too long. The closeness was unexpected, yet not unwelcome; her thoughts, like leaves in wind, scattered for a moment beneath the weight of his presence.
She tilted her chin, turquoise gaze slipping to the side, not from shyness, but from the strange heat blooming behind her cheeks. It was foolish, she told herself. The light, the hour, the quiet; it was all weaving something tender around her, and she wasn’t used to being seen this way. And by a married man nonetheless!
A beat passed. Then, softly, as though afraid the hush between them might shatter if she breathed too hard: „Good,” she murmured, the ghost of a smile playing on her lips. „I’d hate for you to think I haunt this place alone.”
A flicker of her eyes, a glance up through snowy lashes; fleeting, then gone. She didn't move away. His chest hovered just shy of her shoulder, a breath apart, yet she remained still, unwilling to move, unwilling to close the space that felt both impossibly small and immeasurably vast.

his breath, when it came, was low and even — a slow thing, like wind rolling through the quarry stones. she did not pull away. neither did he. the closeness was nothing he had planned, and yet he did not retreat from it. perhaps he should have. perhaps that would have been wiser.

but his wife had gone.

and so he stood with her in the hush, letting the mist twine around their ankles like some old omen, letting her words stir something long-dormant behind the steady veil of his gaze. i’d hate for you to think i haunt this place alone. his single eye flicked toward her, where she lingered in the mist-light like a pale wraith half-born of frost and starlight. there was a softness in her expression that made something in his chest shift — not a tremor, not yet, but the beginning of something unsettled.

you do not haunt, he said at last, voice a rasp low with sleep and gravel. you keep it warm.

his gaze did not stray, not even now. not even as silence threatened to bloom again between them.

a moment passed. then another.

his voice was quieter when it came again, touched with something unreadable. let us walk. the stone has long memory, but it keeps no secrets. perhaps it will tell us something worth knowing.

Her breath hitched, small and almost imperceptible, as frost melting too fast beneath a sudden sun. She did not face him right away. Instead, her eyes traced the mist curling at their feet, the ripple of wind across the quarry pools, anything but the warmth he offered so simply. So unexpectedly! Her shoulder shifted, not closer nor away, but a subtle adjustment, a branch bending beneath snow. She lifted her head slowly then, and the veil of pale lashes parted to reveal eyes that no longer shied from his. Turquoise, caught between silence and something softer.
„The Quarry is kinder to me than most places I’ve known,” she murmured, her voice nearly carried off by the dawn breeze. Then, with a faint tilt of her head, she let her eyes trail down the worn stone path ahead, as if considering not just the way forward, but the presence at her side.
„And if it remembers us…” she added, turning her body toward the direction of the light, „then maybe it remembers the sound of footsteps beside mine.” Her limbs moved with quiet certainty, fur brushing softly against the air.. She walked not as one fleeing the past, but as one willing to meet it, one slow step at a time. She passed him by half a pace, her shoulder nearly grazing his chest, and glanced back; not to check if he followed, but because a part of her hoped he would.
„Come,” her voice a hush just above the quiet,, „let us see what the stone will tell us.”

solharr walked as a man half-mended—each footstep carved from habit, not ease. he moved beside her in that silence where grief went unsaid but still lived, where the dead walked in the hollow spaces between breaths.

he said nothing at first.

only watched as aneira’s eyes traced the world, soft as the wind that stirred around them. the pale light caught her fur, made her seem a thing carved from the dawn. not fragile. but luminous.

his ear twitched at her words. the quarry remembers us. maybe it did. he had not walked here with another since callyope. not like this.

but aneira’s voice did not ache like memory. it carried something else.

hope, perhaps.

then let it remember, he rumbled at last, voice a low warmth in the cold. and let it know we walked without fear.

his eye met hers only briefly, a glint of that old strength still buried beneath scar and stone. he followed. not because she asked—but because he already had been.

and in that half-pace she took ahead, solharr allowed himself to breathe.
not as a chieftain.
not as a widower.

but as a man who still had something left to offer.

She walked a pace ahead, but not to lead, only because it was easier to breathe when she wasn’t looking directly at him. The mist clung to her limbs as she moved, swirling soft and slow around her ankles, like the past trying to hold her still. But her steps were deliberate, light yet sure, her shoulder blades rising and falling with each breath she dared to take.
His presence lingered at her side, quiet as always, but steady, as the thrum of distant thunder held just beneath the earth. She felt it in the way the air shifted near her flank, in the faint sound of stone giving way beneath his larger paws. It did not unnerve her. Not anymore. Hs words brushed her ears like a warm current beneath ice. They settled deep, past the places she usually kept locked, stirring something older than grief, older than fear.
The frostmaiden halted; only for a heartbeat. Her paw hovered above the ground before she let it fall again with purpose. Her head tilted just enough for her eyes to catch his golden gaze; a glimmer of reflection in pale glacier-blue, framed by lashes still damp with fog. „Then let it remember,” she murmured back, voice a breath between stone and silence, „that even ghosts leave footprints.”
The smallest smile touched her mouth; not wide, not bright, but real, as the first crack of thaw after a long winter. Her shoulder brushed Solharr in passing. She didn’t flinch. „I used to think survival meant silence,” she continued, softer now, as if afraid the moment might vanish if she spoke too loud. „But maybe it means being heard... even without words.”
A pause. Her steps slowed, and for once, she didn’t race ahead: „I don’t mind the sound of your steps beside mine.” And though she did not turn again, the warmth that rose beneath her fur betrayed her. Not shame, not embarrassment, but something quieter: hope for the future. Aneira would not let herself forget the vow his heart once made to another; that history was not hers to rewrite. But she did not shy from the warmth between them: she allowed it, accepted it. Let it linger like the warmth of sunlight through frost: fleeting, but real.

her shoulder brushed his, and though he did not flinch nor falter, something rooted deep inside him shifted. like stone cracking unseen beneath the spring melt. he did not smile — solharr was not a man shaped easily into smiles — but his ear tilted subtly toward her voice, an unspoken reply. her steps slowed, and in answer, so did his, adjusting without fanfare, without command. they would walk together, not as warden and charge, not as ghost and grief, but as two carrying the same heavy history, shouldering it across the thawing land.

the mist curled low over the quarry stone, pooling in the divots of long-forgotten paths, and solharr exhaled into it — a breath that seemed to carry a lifetime of winters. he rumbled low, not quite words, but the sound of steady affirmation. a promise made not with speeches or grand gestures, but with the simple fact of his continued, unyielding presence beside her.

he would not leave her to walk these haunted places alone. not now. not ever.

we can fade here if you want <3
we can start another? I love their closeness sm!

Her shoulder lingered against his for a breath longer than needed, a quiet act of trust she made no apology for. Aneira kept her head forward, though the faintest flush stirred beneath the pale of her cheeks, hidden well beneath the early mist. There was a softening in the way her steps matched his, a rhythm found without words.
When her voice came, it was low, almost lost to the breath of the wind: „Then we walk together,” she murmured, the edges of her tone roughened by something she could not easily name. She did not promise. She did not need to. Her presence, like his, was a vow in itself: quiet, steady, enduring. Aneira turned her head slightly then, just enough that her pale gaze brushed him from beneath her lashes, and for a heartbeat, the guarded frost of her expression thawed, enough to let him see that he was not alone in carrying the weight of old winters. 
With the flameborn by her side, Aneira felt something stir in the depths of her chest, a warmth that was as unwelcome as it was undeniable. The forstmaiden did not invite it, nor did she seek it, but each time he was near, it crept beneath her skin, subtle and insistent, as the first rays of dawn pushing through the cold of night. It was a foreign sensation, something she had not allowed herself in years. Yet, in his presence, she did not shy away from it entirely.
For the first time in what felt like an age, she let herself linger in that warmth, as fleeting and delicate as it was. She did not grasp for it, but she no longer closed herself off to its touch. There was a quiet acceptance in her heart, a surrender to the fact that, perhaps, it was alright to feel something again, even if she did not yet understand it.