Zsoka

I live the death of the young and the free

He draws closer. He stops. His whole body, small, innocent, and adorned, is a quivering dream, a wraith-like waif of childhood. Zsoka slows only when he is beside her, stops only when he can feel her heat radiating against his. His hind hooves, small and sharp, cut into the soft soil and his fore-wings flare to fill and cease with air.

She's the same bird he remembered, still thinking more than he could ever imagine would be fun, but she is kinder, maybe. Or was she always like this? He isn't sure. She calls him beautiful and his lips turn up and part with a faint whinny. Beautiful?

He starts to walk, the joints of his wings rising and falling upon the dirt. The lake is there, the same one from before. Or is it a pond? And was it always there?

Zsoka looks down at his own reflection, sees the majesty of which she speaks, and dives in. "I am!" he cries out through the sound of water's rise and decay, "I'm beautiful, and so are you!"

The water is a cushion, a warm hug and kiss from a mother he doesn't remember. He stretches out his wings and floats somehow, on his back like a dead fish, belly up like a kitten. She's telling him something, bird is. Something about their differences.

But what differences are there? No, he can't think of any. He's a bird and so is she, nothing fills him with more joy.

It's his bridle that she singles out, his bridle that she references. And it is only then that he remembers its weight on his features, its awkward tan dangling as it hangs over his too-small façade. "This?" he questions, his head jerking up to look back at Isopia on the shore, "this is just my pop's old junk," he says with a smile and a little wiggle of his hindquarters, nickering as the cool water swishes about with his tail.

She's silly, bird. Always thinking too much. But that's ok, because he needs someone to think for him, sometimes. And the one who normally would is drowning, being pulled deeper underwater by five corpses all hungry and angry, all made up of white, wings, and fire.



[[No worries, windows 10 takes getting used to and I'm working with it too. Sorry I didn't see this tag til now! It's also not my best, my Knox muse has been suffering but I'm trying to get something out for people anyway.
Q: Is Iso just using dreamworldness to feel out that stuff about Knox's bridle and magic? Cause it isn't common knowledge and he actually keeps it all quite secret/wouldn't have told her about it and let her know. If she wants to have a vague sense of it in dream that's fine but irl I'm not sure how she could have that knowledge.]]