Ampere wasn't sure what to say to the mounting despair of the younger girl, so she stood silent, her lips pulled into a weak smile that promised a hope she didn't feel. Her posture remained strong and sturdy, though her heart fluttered with mounting anxiety.

It was a relief when the mention of food was able to distract the golden girl from her downward spiral of despair. Ampere couldn't blame her for it, having experienced her own losses in the past. The difference was she'd always been more or less on her own, even when sharing company. For Ampere their absence was more of a growth of quietness, where as for Riel the loss was everything she had ever known. Ampere couldn't fully understand the weight of that, but she sympathized.

We don't know that they're gone yet, she reminded herself too, not willing to give up before they'd even started.

"Don't worry, there's plenty to go around, our family is small still." Ampere's voice managed to be more upbeat, her smile firming on her features. She even forgot to watch for the wraiths. Instead the dunes of the desert danced in her mind's eye, beautifully exotic and bountiful in their own right. They were inviting, and they would do well to mend a traveler's weariness. She was not ashamed of their herd size, nowhere near the thirty head this girl came from, they were her brothers and her sisters of the sand and she was proud of them.

"You look like you need the rest," Ampere added, realizing as soon as she said it that it might seem rude. Go figure even when she wasn't trying to be. "On the way you can tell me about your herd, so that I'll know them when I see them." Ampere interjected hurriedly, trying to sound hopeful.

She began to lift her dark wings from her back, stretching them in preparation for flight, before remembering Riel's appeared injured. Her gaze remained fixed on the palomino, gauging how she might choose to use her wings, or lack there of. If they had to hoof it the time would definitely be longer and the path more dangerous, but Ampere couldn't abandon her now especially. She had made a promise to help, and she would.
As she watched for a sign Ampere's mind itched with questions about the bizarre set of appendages. If one was injured, were three still good enough? Did all of her family have four wings? They'd surely have enough to talk about on their journey.
"I'd love to know more about your four wings, they're beautiful," Ampere breathed, truly transfixed by them. She hoped too that the compliment might distract the mare from her worries, if only for a while.

Ampere had a warmth to her, it was just usually overshadowed by her jolting anger; an anger for all the injustice in the world. This was an injustice surely, but not one either of them could change. Often the world was hard and sometimes there was nothing you could do to change that, no matter how much you fought.

A M P E R E
PRETTY FACE AND ELECTRIC SOUL