Zsoka

I live the death of the young and the free

The hunter is running and he is hungry. He runs now to the World's Edge, the land of the she-bitch of a Goddess that has cursed him and left him, and he is ready to kill.

There is nothing left in Knox's soul but darkness. He has lost all sense of apathy and replaced it with passion to kill. He is constantly dissatisfied, seeking more, seeking pain of the other and hurt in himself. All he bears is the mark on his neck and the tattered wings, splayed on his back. Four capes of feathers in white, gold, and red, hiding his shame in destruction.

Dovev has not yet gotten all he wants. He has not yet fed his hunger to the point where he is sated; the fast is still not yet fully broken. And so he thunders through the cold and the dark, his heart set on the center of a foreign herdland: to find and kill its conquerer kings.

He has met them both, in some shape or form, and he wants them now crushed beneath his hoof. He is not of the mind to consider the risk. There is a part of him that understands the likelihood of death, and a larger part still that doesn't give a damn. Should he die in such a way, angel wings on his shoulders and blood on his lips, is it not more grand than to sputter out the way this colt, this pitiful progeny, surely will on his own?

Yes, there is murder on the mind, but not just the murder of another, anymore.

Knox tries to rationalize: You, too, will die. But hope is lost and Dovev's mind crumbling in madness.
Am I not already dead?

And what is the body of another, the limitations of a life not fully one's own? Is it heaven to simply walk the earth again as a memory, or is it Hell to walk it in another's hooves? Dovev cannot decide. Dovev doesn't care to. And so he barrels through woods and hills, following the smoke and the light of a distant fire.

It is only when the hunter draws close that he sees the one thing that can stop him now: there, lying on the frozen ground with two proud parents looming over them, are the newborn children of Thor and Evangeline.

The hunter knows only this, thinks only this: What have I done?

His heart sinks and the torrent of his approach ceases. He stands, cloaked and still. The wings settle against his side and the last of the blood on his face halts its dripping. The fire is warm and at its side is a warmth, too: the warmth of life too precious to defile.

Dovev tries to step forward, but anguish reaches out to thwart him. THIS, the hunter cries in his mind, THIS YOU CANNOT HAVE. THIS YOU CANNOT HURT.

The murderer has no choice but to obey. Beneath the power of such a command, his steel grey hide falls away. But it is not Knox whose figure reveals itself beneath that shadow. Knox cries at the horror of his acts but he cannot bring himself to stand and face them, not now and perhaps not ever. His form shrinks as he retreats into total innocence. Trapped beneath four weighted wings and the sign of murders two, Zsoka stands alone.

Manhattan is gone. The hunter himself, his devotion and his company, everything he has defined himself by, is gone. The young is all that remains, the only thing left even as he falls under the sudden weight of Muriel's leaden wings. Covered in their cracked blood, his lips red and his neck wound a painted gash on the small colt's neck, he struggles to remove himself from the weight of the wings in the shadows of the trees. They are hidden and will stay that way, but he is to emerge.

The cold affects Zsoka's thin body the same way it tugs at the newborns before him. He bites back at the itch of the magic cloak that covers him before shrugging it off and stepping towards the warmth of the fire. This, he must grow close to. The bridle hangs off of his features and creates in him an image of foolishness--the blood, a picture of abandonment. For who is to find a child in a state such as his, and think he is well cared for?

No, Zsoka does not seem that way at all. And it is fitting, perhaps, for he has never known a mother and his father's memory has even started to fade after so many years of death. Death he doesn't know he has gone through--death he is ignorant of.

Without fear, he hobbles out from the dark shadows and moves towards the fire. He lays his buckskin body beside its warmth, looking up at the large stallion and his mate with deep, black doe eyes. Exhaustion and the weakness in his foreleg has led him here, to rest upon the earth in the snow. It is not in him to walk farther.

And though he is weak and his heart is tired from murders he does not know, he still extends his thin, wavering neck--reaching out to touch the feathered twins and find in them an invitation to their fire.


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