Slumber stirred to wakefulness as the day unfolded and the desert bloomed into life. Blue eyes shifted behind dark lids, lashes fluttering tightly against a bright flash that washed a dim red over the field of her dreams. Burned, the image of sleep broke away as Ampere awoke. She stirred slowly at first, not yet conscious of what had roused her or the significance it carried. Casually she stretched onto her sternum, extending first one foreleg, then the other and wiped the sand from her eyes as the rest pushed around her hooves.

With a grunt she rose to her feet and shook of the red grains that clung eagerly to her coat. She moved at an amble across the desert plains, grabbing at what leaves she could find, always working towards the oasis as she went, thirst an inevitable need. Around her more and more horses became active, and like a faint buzzing you're able to ignore until it persists, so was Ampere's growing awareness that something was askew. Kygo, the green parrot diving on the thermals above her, noticed it too. The horses were bustling, but more than she remembered. Their chatter was dissonant and haunting, and she found herself inexorably drawn towards them, her pace quickening with every denizen that passed her.

Bustling, she crested a dune to the oasis shore, her child-swollen sides heaving back and forth with excess energy even as she stopped short. A cry might have leapt from her parted lips if not for the fact her throat ran suddenly dry that it hurt. There, before her among the sands and the amassed herd, was Gaucho.

Except, that wasn't Gaucho.

Ampere unfailingly recognized him, well accustomed to the slopes of his flesh be they above or below her, but this had to be someone that just looked like Gaucho, because everything else was decidedly not him.

She moved forwards, stiff legged and unblinking as she stared. It wasn't Gaucho, because that horse that was on the ground was something weak and defeated, whereas the Gaucho she knew had such unyielding strength that it was terrifyingly intimating in as much as it was inspiring.

She was pressing closer to the throng, eyes burning with saline and feathers bristled to their very edges.
If that was Gaucho, then why did he not burn with the passion of the Sun and the light of his encompassing heart? The horse she was looking at now was cold and unburnt, devoid of anything remarkable that flames could roar into existence for.

She shouldered her way into the crowd, stopping just before her hooves scuffed his neck.
It couldn't be Gaucho... those items were obviously fakes, those markings just berry stains... those scars were just mocks and those corpses of companions were an obvious farce made out of clay. This wasn't Gaucho, this wasn't Gaucho, this wasn't Gaucho...

"Sikeaxe."
She didn't speak; her throat was closed in on itself. Tears ran freely down her face, carving silver against her black cheeks, magnifying the electric blue of her gaze which had gone utterly sullen with grey steel today.

"Sikeaxe," she intoned again, barely more than a squeak. The word seemed to exhaust her because them her flanks trembled as a quiet sob racked through her body. Ampere closed her eyes, pushing out the grief that welled in them. She clenched her teeth, the click of enamel an audible snap above the rest of the disquiet.

"SIKEAXE, WHAT ARE YOU DOING? HEAL HIM!" In a flash Ampere's gaze was alight and turned upon the healer made queen. In her spot Ampere quivered, like an arrow strung in its bow and ready to loose, her stare the sharpened edge of the flint head. "HEAL HIM DAMN YOU! CAN'T YOU SEE HE NEEDS YOU NOW!?"

Through her grit the anguish continued to come, a sterling stream that blurred her vision. "How dare you take his crown, when you haven't even tried!" Her ears sunk and her lips peeled back an ugly sneer across her teeth, exposing their weathered edges. All around her blue sparks began to gather, popping and snarling into form from the remnants of old life churned in the sands.

"Get up," she said lowly, dangerously, to the bay body there at her hooves.

"Get up I said!" she yelled suddenly, her wings flaring with an arc of angry lightning. Her head whipped down, snapping at a clump of his mane and jerking back forcefully on it. "You never give up!" she seethed, words forced between her teeth and the black hair therein. "Why would you stop fighting now!? Don't give up, FIGHT DAMN YOU!" She made to tug again, but the weight of his body seemed to drag her down instead as she bowed against her knees beside him, her head and neck slung over his flesh nearest her, wet sobs spreading staining him with salt.

"Please get up," she begged of his hairs as her exhale whispered into them. She breathed in, a racking, wheezing sound of despair, and she writhed at the fresh scent of him that her inhale drug in. How dare he still smell of heat and sweat and dry ocean breezes when he was like this - gone. Even his skin still felt warm the longer she laid on him, though it was a fading heat far more reminiscent of an ember than the Wildfire he had been.