A voice cut through the air before Ampere could see anyone, but she was relieved, because she knew that sly silky tone belonged to the Moon. So often ignored on this lava-wrought rock, Ampere had feared her prayers might yet again be brushed aside.

As always when any god was close by Ampere was reminded of their terrible power and beauty. The Sun's had become decidedly more familiar over time, but his glory continually overwhelmed her any time they met - it was no different with the Moon, though her's was more delicate than his, more svelte. Rather than a roar of flames and light she came in discreetly, softly, appearing and surprising rather than commanding attention immediately with a show. Ampere didn't believe for a second that the Moon didn't appreciate shows though - hand't the murders been just that, a performance of power?

If anything, it showed Ampere how mortal the gods were, accentuated further by the way the Moon spoke of the Earth. In response Ampere's gaze narrowed faintly, wondering if the Moon agreed with everything the Earth had told her - and if so, would she try and stop her too, or why wouldn't she try and stop her? Ampere had always considered that all the gods believed as the Earth did regarding companions, but it had been much easier to target him because he had been the one that said it all, and she dared to hope, that among four gods at least one of them could see her point? Of course, they were just like the mortals, so she also knew they might all prefer to utilize the companions to strengthen their herds, because if they were but insects compared to the gods, what did that make companions to them?

Still, Ampere did not talk, because she was not here to argue, not with the gods - although ti was difficult for her not to pipe up when the Moon called her self proclaimed Mother of Companions. Ampere certainly wouldn't have chosen a title like that, but as her renown and her purpose grew, so too did her recognition, and that was the name that followed her. Maybe her actions had indirectly selected it, but she was more prone to naming things something no one else could pronounce (case in point her son). That wasn't the important part though, but rather what the Moon was promising.

"This crusade is already a challenge, what's one more?" she smirked, but her tones were dry, her heart guarded. She was more or less dealing with the devil here, could she truly come out on top? She's never wondered this with the Sun, not even the Earth, but the Moon was a different being entirely and her sickly sweet tones put Ampere on edge. "I've little more to lose in this fight against bonds. Whatever test you have for me couldn't possibly be worse than what all the rest of Helovia does on a daily basis." How many times had her heart been broken because of a bond? How many friendships lost, or never forged? How many tears shed? How many days had she pretended she could tolerate living alongside everyone and their slaves? She couldn't endure it any longer, so she was ready for the Moon's worst, because surely it was better than what Ampere already faced all the time.

Very simply put, Ampere was wrong.

She didn't know it yet, at least not this very moment as she stood before the Moon, blue gaze peering up with resolve and anticipation as the darkness spoke sweet. Although she had not paused nor even hesitated, Ampere knew the weight of the words she had spoken, but she truly felt them too, which is why they weren't difficult to say. To Ampere, what was worse than this daily hell of living alongside such willfully ignorant slave drivers? What was worse than being utterly powerless to stop the increasing greed and ruination of tiny, fragile lives? So yeah, test me she had said, and she kept saying it as her body stood at the ready, muscles tense, senses on alert, heart hammering in her throat. Test me - because Ampere either needed to pass or fail at this point, she was done with continuing to study.

We never really stop learning though. Something Ampere would be reminded of, among other things, as she watched with a quiet gasp the movements of the Moon that revealed the precious egg. Transfixed, Ampere's gaze followed every movement of the unborn soul, a half-step even taken forward at the first instance where it seemed the revered life would roll free into oblivion. When it was pulled back instead she paused, mouth still agape in silent wonder while her gaze flicked back to the Moon, trying to find understanding in the lines of her lilac features. Instead Ampere's focus was sequestered again by the unborn creature as it gently rapped on the thin casing that saved it from the cruel world. Absorbed, Ampere crept closer, shaking her head gently and murmuring a soft, pleading "No, no child, stay in there, where it's safe..."

The Moon's sterling words cut across her own however, and in response her ears twitched, head lifting, turning, falling. For a moment Ampere was at a loss of words, and several times her lips parted before swiftly clamping shut once more. All the while her heart beat like a wild jackrabbit tangled up in her ribs, and she felt just as terrified as one. After a final pause she seemed to decide on a soft smile, one proffered to the Moon with equally kind eyes. A thank you, for she was given this opportunity that Oxy had stolen from her; this long awaited chance to save a life instead of just condemning the ones already damned.

The smile became a grin, as wild and confident as ever. The jack rabbit kicked free, soaring inside of her with rampant exaltation. The notion of salvation was so fierce inside of her there was nothing left to splinter away into doubt, and so the thought never came, even as she knelt down before the emerging soul with the devil as the backdrop. Ampere didn't know it then, but the first moment of this being's life would be the last of hers - the last of the life she knew anyway.

"Go on then, if you must," she whispered, laughing, smiling, crying at the beauty of it. Retribution blossomed inside of her like a spring flower, so full of hope and opportunity. "You can do it little one, push your place into this world." Too large to physically assist, Ampere nonetheless reached out with her unseen magic, plucking at the minimal electricity that lived inside all things, but particularly the current that hummed within the shell fragments. Gingerly she tossed them aside, helping the chick hatch its way to freedom. She was careful not to tug on what wasn't ready, and let her words be the encouragement rather than rush or force the process that belonged to this new life - only it could truly decide when and if it would hatch, to provide any further pressure would surely soil this beautiful, singular moment in its existence.

As the creature finally, strongly, tumbled free of its shell remnants Ampere cast them away with a laugh. At its level, she could see into its barely opening eyes clearly, and there her own large reflection peered back from the reflection of its new, impressionable gaze. Shuffling her head to her knee Ampere wiped away the saline that had collected and poured free. It let loose a complaining "raaaawk" to which she laughed once more. "There, free at last."

Ampere leaned back, admiring the feat she had managed, glowing at the prospect of what it all meant. As she had told everyone, you could help them but not- What's that? She felt something like a tug inside of her, something that she had only ever experienced on a few occasions before, and only then when magic was invading her. Defensively Ampere's head flung from side to side, blue eyes glistening with bliss sharpening into a rebuke as she searched for whatever unseen foe dared assault her now. All the while the tug, now a force inside of her grew.

"WHO'S THERE!?" she finally demanded when her lighthouse-sweep of a glare divulged no one aside from the hatchling and the distant presence of the goddess. Abruptly the force became so strong she felt pressure on every empty part of her body, as if something were manifesting internally, filling up all the space that her innards and her emotions always drifted amongst. "STOP!" she snarled, tail cracking against her flanks in agitation while she shook her head repeatedly, eyes pinched shut against the building sensation of her own being shoved aside by something unseen and unknown.

Then, just as she reached a moment of desperate panic, it subsided into a dull weight inside of her, there, but not so overwhelming. In its seizing wake, she felt a gnawing hunger. Bewildered Ampere stood, her four legs spread as if only their sharp angle was keeping her upright. Her flanks heaved as evidence of the physical (and mental) toll the experience had taken on her, while her bleary-eyed gaze, appearing nearly sedated, revealed the discontent that still writhed inside of her.

The chick squawked in its own agony, drawing Ampere's attention. "You too!?" she asked breathlessly, doing her best to collect herself and return to its side, to see if she could stop the assailant before it took this child under siege as well. Her presence created an instantaneous relief, a sensation that flooded all of her senses and erupted in a calm blue within her mind, tumbling like the ocean across all her thoughts. What? she had the wherewithal to wonder, because as strong as Ampere's emotions always were, she never remembered them being accompanied with color and rarely were they soothed by herself.

Then the absolute hunger came again like a slap in the face, rough and insistent and orange upon everything she saw behind her eyes. The bird's cries had subsided now to a particular mewling that she'd heard occasionally - the sound of baby birds begging their mother for food when she returned to the nest.

Bit by aching bit, Ampere put the pieces together.

With an agonizing slowness her head turned back to the chick on the ground. As her gaze locked upon its naked body, she stared in horror as its head thrust up, beak parted, screaming hunger - the same hunger that ripped through her own body.

As if electrocuted by the infant Ampere leapt back, shouting out "NO!" The chick unleashed a shrill, terrible shriek accompanied with bursts of red and black fireworks inside Ampere's mind. That confirmed it.

That's when she finally realized she was wrong.

That's when she realize she had bonded.

Baleful, Ampere's gaze shifted to the Moon. The stare she bore was terrible, not for its anger, not for its grief, but for its haunting, gut-wrenching exposure of fear and despair. "What?" was all she managed to whisper, and then it was a barely audible rasp on the verge of an utter breakdown.

All the while, Ampere was hungry.

The blue mare trembled where she stood, rooted to the stone like one of the other sparse weeds, beckoned to blossom among shit and storms and then scorned for lack of beauty because of it. Because wasn't this exactly that, ugly? It was fucking hideous - moral beliefs finally put to the test and failed; but not just failed as in try again tomorrow, but crash and burn your life is over kind of fail.

Ampere was dimly aware that the Moon was speaking, that she continued to bathe in her glow (or lack thereof with all her shadows), that she was the perpetrator of this disparaging moment. Yet, she wasn't, was she? As much as Ampere willed to blame the lavender bitch for this atrocity, she found herself incapable, inundated instead with the echo of the Earth's voice, "the bond is mutual, chosen by both". That understanding wreathed her thoughts, as it often had since the moment he'd spoken it. Loath as Ampere was to accept that as a form of justness, she had always taken it to be the truth. She could never fault the freshly hatched babes, too new to understand what they gave away in such a breathless instant.

She could fault the horses though.
She could fault... herself.

That, more than anything was what gripped Ampere with a cold dread. That she was capable of this, this betrayal. That wounded her, more than anyone or anything ever could, because she was the one that bore the blade, and she was the one that affected the thrust, and she was the one that bled for it. Oh how she bled. Maybe nothing visible to anyone watching, but inside the current swept up quickly, red and violent and terrible. It was the residual effect of being torn apart inside out, and what should have been a torrential agony and rip-current of despair was, for the moment, right. She was glad for the flood that saturated her bones and bogged her hooves, because maybe in its whirling haste it would dislodge the parcel of anarchy that had to exist inside of her. It had to be something, the bit that had allowed this. It had to be somewhere, the fragment that alienated her. There had to be something, somewhere, inside of her that had done this. Something deep, and dark, and hidden, because how could she not have known? How could she not have seen the very evil she fought against rested within her?

This was not the first sensation of self destruction Ampere had ever felt. The majority of her life could be remarked as much, if one bothered to figured her out, and even she, beguiled as she was by her own treachery, was aware of other moments where she had turned upon herself. Those transgressions paled compared to this though; easily overlooked for their harmless desires and fruitless deliveries, waved aside as the silliness of the heart and forgiven for the love that was planted before a bond had been sown, before it had been sullied and wilted beneath harsh words and discarded caresses. Residing among bonded was one thing. Loving someone bonded was another. This though, this bonding was something else entirely. Something Ampere just couldn't forgive like all the other crimes before.

Because if she was willing to break everything that made her something, all at the expense of someone else's freedom, then she didn't deserve anything, she couldn't even be anything. In a single moment her purpose, which she'd thought had turned to iron over time and adversity, was proved to be dust blown away in the wind of a hatchling's exhale. In that gale she crumbled into ruin, each particle of her ethics peeling away from her and floating off in the eddies of the wailing infant, until there was nothing left of her except that dark crumb of treachery.

The flood rose until it spilled out of the blue of her gaze, until finally that drowned out too into a dull, soggy gray. Swept aside, swept away, Ampere deconstructed. Stone slapped heartily at her knees, the shock reverberating up the length of her chest, but if the earth itself was trying to rouse her with a hefty shake, it did not reach her amid the dark sea that she swirled within; it did not touch the dust motes that she drifted away as.

Knees tucked, head bowed, body sagging - she looked as if she'd sunken into prayer. No matter what holy mutterings she might muster, her soul was already damned, no use begging for it now. Mane slipped erratically against her nape, urged into movement with the lilt of her head as well as the blossoming of electricity around her. Like pinwheels the sparks whirled, charging the air around her until it snapped and barked with unspent energy. "I'm tired," she thought sullenly, feathers whispering in the breeze of lightning. "I'm weak," she mused dourly, metal glinting in the Moonlight as charges ricocheted through the air. "I'm selfish" she whispered piteously, knives scratching out a path in the ground as they slid from their sheaths.

In the backdrop the parrotlet wailed endlessly, cradled with fear and confusion in a moment that should have been full of love and reassurance. At a later day Ampere might have considered its demise instead. It would have been easier, kinder surely than a life that rankled with every step.
Here and now though, the blue mare did not consider such black thoughts, because as always the babe was the innocent, but her kind, herself, she - was not.

She was, she was... who was she now, after this? Not Ampere the Mother of Companions, not Thunderhead the whatcher of the world, not anything she had ever been before. She was, she was-

Bonded.

Blue-grey eyes flicked up, rimmed wide with white as they stabbed through bars of black hair. Steel glinted, blades humming as they worked beneath the fastidious hands of electricity. With their points directed towards the offending parcel of her being, wavering just slightly, the multitude of blades reached for Ampere's retribution, however deeply buried within her breast. Their movement was a song as they quivered through the air, and the tune was lovely she thought as she listened, catching it amid the rancor of the Moon and the anguish of the soul. It was lovely because it was justice.

Death was it's own freedom, here at last for her to gasp.

Then he was there, her angel of fire, her white knight dressed in bones. He was there, because of course he was.
She didn't notice him, not at first, she couldn't with as lost as she was amid her own currents of despair. She had senses only for the blades that shot towards her chest, and she anticipated that cold bite of metal, that sharp touch of righteousness, but it never came. What she felt instead was a searing heat that singed away the waters she was drowning in with such a suddenness she choked on the dryness of it.

A startled wail leapt from her throat as her head flung back from the glare of fire and the rough hands it worked with. Iron clattered and clanked against the ground as the shot of flame battered the daggers away. Her body shuddered against the intrusion, shrinking behind the flammable shield of her wings. The fringes of the feathers smoldered, and the acrid smoke smarted in her nose and in the edges of her eyes. Blearily she blinked, an ear twisting at the sound of hooves, of feathers, of love.

She heard a heartbeat, so strong and fervent she was certain it was her own trying to beat its way out of her chest and crawl to the knives itself since they had failed - that's what it deserved after all. It wasn't her's though, she realized that as she felt her rhythm jar against her clenched jaw line, falling in and out of syncopation with the drums that rattled like a war around her. What? she wondered meekly, wings sliding down like a black curtain, spilling against the ground in careless abandonment as the pallid blue of her stare poked around for a response, curious if nothing else.

She saw the dark feet first, the blank glaze of her stare numbly stuck on the meaning of the rugged, sand-dusted limbs that seemed to push the earth down around them. Scorch marks ribbed the cold stone with black lines reminiscent of the ones that barred the legs turning brown the higher she looked. Her breath quickened, heated by the pulse that surged back into life within her, a peculiar tightness that constricted against her chest and her throat. It felt both limiting and gloriously alive.

Her stare continued to trace up the muscular chest worn with scars and a coat growing thicker with the promise of the Sun's fading season. Her eyes followed the contours of the blue markings there, and seemed to draw from them a brighter color more suitable to her normal hue. Her stomach squirmed and flopped as her ranging eyes continued further up, snaking their way along the crevices left by shadows that his bulk and his might cast in the strong curvature of his neck. Her lashes fluttered as she beheld the solid and gruff jaw line, a sight which elicited a quiet sigh of relief and want. Finally her vision coasted across the velvet patterning of his muzzle, across the dimples of his nose, and lastly to the wrinkles and the flint of his own eyes. She held him then, locked in that stalwart gaze, and she thought she saw something akin to fear in the plays of light that flicked across him. Or at the very least, it was something too like weakness, something exposed in him that had never been there before.

Then his words reached her, though the Moon's did not, her presence utterly forgotten, as all were until Gaucho forced his way into her consciousness.

Her dark lips attempted a small smile, but the effort seemed to break her and instead she sobbed freely, seeming to melt even more into the ground while his heatless flames coaxed her into a fragile uncertainty. "Gaucho," she breathed, and the weight of that name, the effort and the meaning it bore both ignited and exhausted her.

"Stay with me."
Don't let me be alone...

He met her, on the ground, the stupid ground where she lay crumpled and useless, where she lay abandoned by herself. All her resolve had left her, and with it all the fight too, because if she could bond, then what exactly was she rallying against all the time? Why had she even bonded, if it was supposed to be wanted? Had she, had she really wanted that experience, that closeness, that eternal companionship?

Gaucho's presence beside her, no around her, was like a warm cocoon that both seemed to lift her away from that hard, unyielding slab of stone that easily could have been a grave, and yet smothered her with a feverish understanding that she wished to reject.
She had, she realized in the moment that she begged for Gaucho's perseverance, his patience, his passion - she had wanted the bond. In shoving away the bonds around her so vehemently, Ampere had isolated herself in ways not fully obvious by the herd she work alongside. The loneliness was there though, and it slowly chipped away at an ache inside of her, so subtle she hadn't even felt it until it was healed with the second soul that slipped beside hers. Was this the inevitability of all their kind then, to always crave a companionship that was promised truthfully, a way different from the shaky, easily broken relationships that existed among them in their own kind?

Then what is this? she demanded of herself, feeling as always that magnetic pull that swayed her decisions whenever Gaucho was close. Her reluctance to embrace the erratic forces that continually brought them together never erased them, her heart beating steadily to the same pulse of his flames, her passion a trail of kerosene that he ignited with so little as a sparking stare. How could that be loneliness? How could she be the one hurt, when she was the one that pushed him?

Conflicted by her thoughts, unwilling to dwell on them, Ampere let herself be dragged into his fire, fully and completely. Now more than ever she needed to feel that heat lancing through her, needed that reassurance that he still burned, needed that urgency to remind her that she was in fact not alone.

She needed to be loved, because she hadn't any left to give herself after this.

The knives were forgotten as her head tilted towards him, curling in the crook of his chest where his scent would stifle everything else from her mind. He smelled of the sea, of heat, of sunlight on lazy days and winds that carried you long and far. She smiled then, an honest one that brushed against his hide as it moved. She could feel the thudding of his heart in the shallow contact against his chest, could hear it thundering excitedly beneath his warm skin. It pulled at her, daring her to dance with it, beckoning at everything she'd been trying her best to ignore. A sudden haste welled inside her, the gentle touches she coaxed along his chest brandishing teeth instead, tugging, nipping, craving him. He could save her, this angel of hell, this demon of desire.

She didn't know how long they had laid there, forever perhaps, or close enough. A hunger roused her, no doubt the companion still moping around near them, but her own desires shunted the newborn's as her hunger overwhelmed her. "I need you," she whispered, blue eyes searching for him, coasting along the contours of his face as she pressed into him before stumbling to rise. The words he had shared were there on her tongue, but they weren't spoken, instead they were shown. She loved him in her wild, frantic way that matched his own roughness. If he'd been gentle she would have wilted, remained lost and broken among the ground, but his confidence and his passion guided her's in turn, forcing it from the depths she had buried it in until it revived her, returning them again.

His touch returned her to herself, reigniting what she had once been, even if she would never be it again, not exactly. It was a memory of times passed and moments yearned for, an embrace so warm and tight it could only be love and that in turn filled her with life. His light, his heat, it swarmed her senses until she buzzed on him and him alone. For the moment, even the soul bond she'd just linked to was not half as strong as the one pulsing between her and the Wildfire, and for that she was glad.

Abandoning all prior reservations, Ampere submitted to the carnal urges she consistently felt for this stallion, accepting his healing, whatever form it took. She was swept away by his urgings, his passion, his selflessness for her accord and in response her heart hammered out his name. "I love you," she panted at last, because in that moment, and so many before, she did.

[fade to black]

Sweat stained and fitfully ravished, Ampere had to widen her stance to keep herself upright. A lusty haze fit her features as she coyly glanced at the bay stallion. Satiated, but a glutton, she leaned in towards him to continue to feel his hide pressed against hers, to feel his pulse though that connection, to bask in that inferno that was his presence. She could fall asleep here, curled up in his glow, happy in a way she hadn't been in... well since the last time they did this. She probably would have too, a yawn forcing its way from her jaws, if not for the abrupt reminder that another soul lingered with them.

Ignored too long as it was the parrotlet's wails and hunger returned with a vengeance now that Ampere's stifling demonstration of emotions had subsided. The moment of harmony and bliss fractured, but the mare did not crumple as before. She couldn't return to that darkness when the Wildfire still blazed beside her. Sighing with a certain morose resignation, Ampere leaned her nose towards the babe, letting it scramble up and tangle in her mane.

"We need to get back," she murmured to him, blue gaze anxious as she turned it upon Gaucho. Back she thought, wondering if she ever could truly get back. Home, perhaps, where she knew what the bird could eat to quiet it and then finally give herself the peace to sort out this mess. Yet, she was reluctant to take the mantle of a dutiful member so soon. "Will you-" she began slowly, unaccustomed to asking things, least of all from him. Most of their relationship had involved either shouting or grunting, any real conversations far and few between. "Will you stay with me?" she asked hesitantly still, nostrils flaring with worry while a gnawing need to not feel alone hummed inside her bones. The weight of the chick did little to assuage those feelings, not when the implications of it ostracized Ampere from her own self. She'd have to search for it in Gaucho, her identity, her purpose, her strength.