Isabelle and her two children, David and Barthélemy, thirteen and six years old respectively, go hiking in the mountain woods. At picnic time, in a sunny glade, the two boys walk away while their mother lay asleep in the sun. Suddenly David finds a beautiful horse lying on the ground in agony. Worried and angry, Isabelle finds her children, and argues with her eldest who does not want to obey her when she tells him to leave the poor animal in these conditions. In a psychological clash that may represent a past of untold words and conflicts, Isabelle takes her youngest son and leaves David with the horse alone in the wood. In making his dramatic choice, the boy takes a kind rite of passage from unaware childhood to the adult age of awareness.