[Tae is screaming about her missing tiger's cloak. Anyone can say they heard her screeching about it, since she'll have been quite loud ;)]

The day was coming to a close, and despite the heat from that normally temperate do the nights in the Throat, the Orangemoon chill was undeniable. The wolf-hide cloak that Tae had been given as a child was nearly too small for her now. She was becoming more and more mare and leaving her childish proportions behind. Ampere's gift in that regard had been quite timely. The tiger pelt served not only as a magical cloak that helped disguise her movements, but it also kept her warmer during these frigid months.

Only now as Tae turned to where the cloak had been placed, she noticed it was gone. Immediately her body began to disappear, as her magic took over, informed by her rapidly increasing heart rate. Her ears flattened against her skull as her pale white eyes scoured the sands.  "FIND IT." She snapped at Mal and Hel, who certainly didnt' need to be told twice. The hellhound and wolf leapt into action, sniffing and scampering around. Of course Tae already knew this was fruitless. She was not a careless child, and would have never just left her prized possession somewhere. Similarly, with two pack animals tethered to her brain, she was positive that one of the canines would have alerted her if, for whatever reason, she was at risk of leaving the pelt behind. 

Mal and Hel grumbled uneasily, never liking to fail their alpha. They whined, heads lowered and tails wagging submissively, as they both pulsed mental responses of we didn't find anything.

Well then. There was only one explanation. Someone had stolen it from her.

Of course Tae should have gone to her Sultana, or perhaps even their gladiator. But Sikeax was...where, exactly? Tae had no idea. And she didn't trust Volterra. He had been a boy when she had last met him, and now suddenly he was taking the coveting position of Gladiator, despite the fact that he had never lived upon their sands, had never fought their wars? Hell, he didn't even have wings. All of this, for reasons of political correctness, Tae kept to herself (well, herself and Grusha of course). And so, instead of seeking them out, she of course went to her mother.

"MOTHER." She screamed across the sands, taking flight immediately while Mal and Hel raced beneath her. Tae's pale eyes scoured the area below, until she saw the familiar bluish-black form of her Mother below. Swiftly she angled her body down, descending far too fast but not caring. Her wings were large enough now to handle haphazard landings. "It's GONE." She yelled as her hooves threw waves of sand. Her nostrils were wide, as were her eyes. With her wings still flared from her flanks, Tae spun to look at her Mother, as Mal and Hel finally caught up, their tongues lolling from their mouths as they panted loudly. "Someone stole my pelt." She continued. "And no, I didn't just leave it somewhere. I never do that." Of course, she legitimately might have, but like any child, that was of course the last thing they would admit to. Besides, if someone had stolen it from her, wouldn't her dogs have picked up the scent?

She was growing numb.

It wasn't just that she couldn't cry over him any more, it was something else. As if all these days, weeks, gods maybe even months spent wallowing in tragedy has seeming drained her; a body cut open and left to bleed out, but it was her heart and soul instead. In all of her lifetime, Ampere had never run out of emotions- she was always adrift in a tidal wave of them, rough and haphazard and dangerous because of them. Now she was driftwood, growing stale among the sand and the salted breezes- cold, hard, brittle.

Numb wasn't dead though.
Broken didn't mean useless.

She still had something, buried deep down under all the seafoam and debris.
Her kids.

The call shriek that Tae unleashed pierced Ampere down into her core, where that something still lived. Half asleep as she was laying in the sands, the mother leapt swiftly to her hooves at that sound, its roar still in her veins, utterly alert and already on the move. Unsure what exactly was happening, but knowing her daughters didn't often need her, especially not with such urgency, Ampere knew it wasn't good. Her limbs churned hungrily through the sands, eager to close the gap between her and the sound of her troubled child; in doing so she abandoned the youngest one to his slumber.

"TAE!" Grus- the name died on her tongue as she spied her daughter, swerving in for a hot descent, the sand nearly glass on her heels. Ampere halted abruptly, her head thrown back by the quickness of it as Tae whipped around, a shout still there on her lips despite their proximity. "What!" Ampere gasped, her 'brows stretching up in sympathetic panic.

Kygo, alerted to all this drama by the sudden influx of rampaging feelings between their bond, flew down from his perch in a nearby tree, echoing his discontent with the frenzied mares in an endless and pointless stream of chatter. He stayed above, mindful of the pups below, his shadow skirting circles around them.

"What," Ampere breathed out again as Tae managed to get a more sensible explanation out. "It's alright, we'll find it" she murmured with a calm patience born of experience with this task. She extended a wing to wrap around Tae in comfort, to soothe her beating heart and the fires it stoked.

"I lost one of my knives once, you know," she said after a moment, paused on thought as she debated sharing her shame. "I was furious, searching everywhere I had been as of late to no avail. I'd thought it gone, but a friend had found it for me." She hummed faintly to herself, the memory flickering behind her eyes.

Her gaze cleared as she shook her head, returning to Tae. "When did you first notice?" have you already looked where you were last? she wanted to ask, but decided not to insinuate Tae wouldn't have. One thing she was sure of about this girl- she was smart and more than capable, and she wasn't a girl any more, Ampere was steadily realizing. When had she gotten this tall? When did she grow up?

Pulling back, Ampere's magic yanked her blade from its sheath by her wing. "The whatching shift goes ever one," she intoned, a blue eye scouring the steel viewing plane as she tilted it back and forth to spy across the Halcyon Flats. "We'll fine it, whatever it takes."

A M P E R E
PRETTY FACE AND ELECTRIC SOUL