Pacing too slow (Beneath Ceaseless Skies)

The story doesn't go far enough, or accomplish enough with its premise to be a good fit, and the ending, where Tomas doesn't seem to have a reason to have returned to free the sisters, ultimately unsatisfying (Shimmer)

Not long ago, archaeologists discovered a huge stone horse
buried deep underground – and it spoke to them. The head of the dig, a dusty
but harmless little man called Peter, was the first to witness this phenomenon,
something which revitalised his otherwise waning interest in the profession of
archaeology.
In the months preceding the discovery, surrounded by nothing
but a parched, dirt filled valley and constantly watched over by a merciless
sun, Peter had – as usual – overseen the unearthing of countless bits of stone,
or to the trained eye ancient flint axe blades and arrowheads, as well as any
number of fragments of prehistoric bowls, plates and other assorted eating
utensils. These were – as usual – cleaned, glued, labelled, catalogued and
taken away to find their place in a stale museum alongside hundreds of similar
knickknacks, dug up on dozens of similar digs and stared at through microscopes
by tens of similar scientists. Peter’s dig colleagues still had a spark in
their eyes, an electric charge of enthusiasm as they knelt in the hot dirt,
busily but vigilantly scraping, occasionally retrieving a non-descript piece of
flint. But Peter’s spark had gone, scraped away over the years like all the
thousands of layers of soil due to the nagging growing suspicion that he was
destined never to find a dinosaur or a Tutankhamen’s tomb and that he had been
cursed to dig up primitive weapons and smashed crockery for the rest of his
career. Archaeologists nowadays were into ‘building up pictures of ancient
societies’, but Peter had always wanted to be one of the grave-robbing
adventurers of days gone by, with fame, fortune and a big house full of ancient
gold treasures and socialite groupies.
Consequently, excavating a large, immaculately preserved,
never before seen or heard of stone horse, was like being shocked back to life
with electric heart paddles. It was big and magnificent – about four metres
high, seated on a square platform in a proud manner with its back straight and
its head held high. Its front legs covered the underside of its body, guarding
the identity of its gender. It created a sense of inferiority in whoever
approached it, partly due to its size, but mainly because of the unmistakeable
air of dignity that surrounded it. They removed it from the earth intact and
placed it on a big mound of soil, looking down across the endless dry valley;
as obvious as a concrete apartment block yet as mysterious as an ancient
parchment.
They soon realised it had nothing in common with the flint
and pots that had been lying near it. Nobody could match its design to any
particular civilisation, nobody could identify the impenetrable stone it was
made of and nobody could even say how old it was. It didn’t answer questions,
it asked them. The more baffling it became the more Peter sizzled with energy
like a dizzy student, and then one morning as he was bent over in the pounding
heat trying to brush some brown muck from the cleft of the front left hoof he
heard a wonderfully clear, resonating, genderless voice from above asking him
what he was up to. He stopped, looked up and saw nothing but the horse’s blank
stone face.
“If you want to know something, it’s better to ask.”
Peter was struck by an interesting concoction of fear and
joy, bewilderment and realisation. A flash of a future stuffed with cash and
nubile blonde millionaires’ daughters fizzed through his brain. Then he
composed himself, got to his feet and went to tell the world.