[P] and everything is not the same now [summer]

[Kibou]

FINALLY! Something to do! It seemed like all he ever did these days was stand in the doorway, looking out across the lake. He would search for hours for his mother, hoping and praying that she would return to him safely. She had robbed him on a childhood, something he had wanted more than anything. Just to be young and free, it was a dream he was never allowed to have. But then she came home and everything seemed to change. Nothing was the same, nothing was as it seemed. And yet, he was still here, feeling so lonely.

The summer beach bash was the perfect place for him to try and fit in, to find something that made him feel young again, as if his measly two years of life classified him as old. He was up at dawn, picking seashells and playing volleyball like everyone else who had gathered here. But perhaps what he was looking forward to the most was the sandcastle building. As a much younger child, he had spent his mornings at the lakeside beach, building castles and shapes in the sand. He had loved it.

This particular hour, he had set down to the beach with his shovels and pales in hand. He nestled himself in the white sands, smoothing out the base for what would be a grand sand castle, he could feel it. Beside him was a small trough of water, already filled to the brim to use as a glue. Filling up his first bucket with sand, he added a little water to make it stick more firmly together before he dumped it in the center of his base.

At first, his castle didn’t seem like much and probably wouldn’t win first place, but it made him happy. And so, the happy colt continued to build his masterpiece, putting in one more bucket of sand at a time. He was still a long ways from being finished, but overall, he was happy with the way it was turning out. But like everything else in his life, he was just waiting for the structure to come crashing down around him.

@Maeve