A mother lays her children down to sleep on mossy ground; their little chests rise and fall together, their fine limbs pressing gently into the giving earth.

She pets each of them tenderly, and wherever her hands land tufts of hair sprout forth.

Eventually her children are as dappled as whatever the light touches through the leaves.

They awake, finding themselves the same but changed. The eldests antlers cast small shadows. They startle each other, and leave for the woods, that small secret place which their mother tends to each and every day.