Awakenings

It was the heat on his boots that had woken him: while the rest of him still lay in shadow, the sunlight had broken through a gap in the trees to shine hotly on his legs. Dick had ridden through the night from the City to Epping Forest, where he shivered and worried through the lonely dawn, eventually dropping into a confused and anxious doze that deepened after a time into a dreamless sleep. Now, he is awake again.

He squints upward, trying to estimate the hour. The sun has passed from overhead but has not sunk far yet toward the horizon. The air is hot and still, the sky so bright and heavy that it seems to be pressing down on the leaves that shade him, parting them with its weight.

Excerpt from DICK Chapter 12: Study of Figure in a Landscape