It's wrong that he remembers in so much detail that moment of his life. Dreams are never so precise, especially regarding events from centuries past.
The bird has a gold crown.
Immediately, all the memories that follow up rush to the front of his mind. He had reached out, certain that this bird had been the one that would visit in the month's past. He has to see it closer, despite how touching it would disturb the reek of death that has claimed the bird, Goku needs to know that this one is the one with the white crown.
Oh gods…
They don't have gold feathers, or at least none that Goku has ever seen. His eyes are keen and he has watched them for as long as he can remember. The one in front of him has a crown, though.
Why did he wake up this morning to find the body? Why can't he reach it? Why is this so important?
Why this dream; this particular memory?
He's dreaming. He knows he is. This is not the present and something has put him here. Since he cannot draw consciousness to him, he's trapped with the strongest need to realize something.
It has to boil down to the Witch forcing him into this particular moment.
"Wake up," he growls, pushing at the natural barrier between himself and the rigid creature. "Wake up, wake up, wake up!" He's not sure if he's yelling at himself or the bird.
They sing so sweetly, always snatching him from his wonderings so consistently. Music taming the divided beast within, and something sooths him in this instant when he knows he'll hear sounds that are pleasing in the future.
That is, the future that's happened after this memory. He just can't return to it yet. Dammit, what happened then? Why does it make him feel warm when he nearly grasps it and…
It slips away, just out of reach. The bird, too, is never going to be rescued by Goku. There's no way he can prove that it doesn't have a yellow shine to it's head; feathers soft and voice quiet now.
"Wake up," his voice fails, a rasping whisper until the dream repeats itself. It's undeniably important for Goku to see this bird as something different.
He doesn't know why this is and the frustration that grows because of the missing answer could torture him forever.
Wake me up. Why won't you wake me up?!
It can't be like the Witch has said. He can't be here forever, because he knows Sanzo finds him.
"Sanzo will come," he chokes, as if the bird can somehow hear him.
The gold is just a figment of his imagination. It's just a trick that the Witch inserted to hurt him. But…
Blond birds don't exist. Not of this breed that he sees so often. Sometimes they visit. Sometimes they rest on the cliff where he can see them. Once there was a nest, but only once. The pieces of the shells had survived the winter and he could reach one brittle piece. Violet specks that contested every other colour that Goku's eyes were familiar with. One day he lost the shell when a wind swept it from where Goku had left it.
No more violet. And the only gold deserves to come from the sun until…
"Sanzo."
It's not fair that the dream fails to progress. Goku knows more now than he ever did the first time. But the future won't come and the Witch has left him with his moment.
The bird that defies the truth by having…
"Oh no," he starts to understand, pressing his face against the stone and starting to realize the true extent of this moment. Why she chose this moment of his past.
He had been happier not knowing.
The bird isn't just…centuries ago and it's entirely possible that…past lives that the others had lived while Goku waited what seemed like an eternity, immortalized in a mountain prison while the seasons brought nests and birds and also created lost things.
The bird is…
"Wake up," Goku shouts with new fervor. If it hears him…
It'll tell him to shut up. It'll be annoyed that Goku (like always, like in the future-now)woke it from it's sleep, happier in it's eternal dream than Goku is in his own and…
"Sanzo, wake up!!!"
But if the bird is his Sanzo in a past life, he will not answer Goku for another few hundred years. And for the boy, time does not move. It only repeats itself.
He opens his eyes and finds that there's something nagging at his mind. It's as if he's trapped and there's something seriously wrong with the details…
There's a dead bird outside, and the sun makes the feathers shine golden.