It is summer, certainly, but the boy smells like spring.
And if you wander close enough, you’ll see that it’s life that thrums beneath the bark, such a vibrant green is rebirth.

Listen close enough and you’ll hear the way the birds call out to him, beckoning.
And he follows, leaves stirring in his wake, falling gently on the sun-scorched earth. 

(One day he will be able to call upon the rain, but he is just a small thing now. The flowers bend their faces toward him but he cannot call upon them to bloom yet. The birds call to him and the spring that thrums in his veins, but he does not understand their songs—it is likely that he never will, but perhaps he will one day understand that they are calling to him.)

The summer grasses sway, reaching greedy for his knees and he thinks to lay himself down among them like a fawn. And he smiles softly to himself because it is a wonder simply to be alive, to love something so fiercely as he loves the sun, the spring, the bird-calls. 

But he is more arbor than equine as he lies there, breathing softly, mouth pressed to the soft, slick bark of his foreleg as sleep beckons. He slumbers, small and still, until he is abruptly awoken by a soft kick in the ribs that effectively knocks the breath out of him as he jolts awake and scrambles to his feet.