The Winter Sun

Chapter 3

"Oh Sun God!" The woman yelled upon opening the door. The sight in front of her deepened even more the wrinkles on her pale forehead. "Lach...What happened to you?" Her hands though petite and wrinkly grabbed the bluish and reddish face hard enough to prompt a hiss from the young man.

Lach jerked his face away. "Just an accident," He mumbled through thick annoyance lacing his tone. He brushed past over her concerned eyes.

"Elson! Make haste," the woman yelled, eyes following her battered son inside the warmth of the cottage. Lach hissed as he shrugged off his jacket and collapsed on one of the stools sitting in front of a roughly polished wooden table. It squeaked under the force of his weight.

"Brother!" Tiny arms swept Lach with so much force it pushed the air out of his lungs.

"Elson, please. Not now." he let out in a strangled voice, hissing in pain. The boy took a step back and that's when his eyes widened.

"Why-"

Yehime chased the little boy away with a fleeting hand. "Elson. Leave your brother alone. You can see he is not in condition to play." Lach rubbed his noise. "He apparently had a lot of fun in the market." Lach suppressed the rolling of his eyes. He knew better than to do that in front of his mother. "What happened to you?" she inquired a second time but Lach offered a stubborn muteness. Her disapproving gaze burned holes on face before it fell on his hands. "Oh my..." she drawled out, discovering other cuts and bruised. He tugged the tunic of sleeves down while she rolled her up her own with a sigh. She stomped away, retrieving a bucket on the way before the door shut down. A few minutes that stood like an eternity in which Elson hit him with a hundred questions at the speed of a mill passed before she was back. Her back bent from the heaviness of the bucket as she stifled a hiss. Lach was half-way standing when her icy glare put him back on the stool with a grimace.

She poured the water in a pan marinating on the flames of the hearth. Each movement were accentuated by a heavy sigh. A steaming bucket sat down heavily on the wooden floor. "You better have a clear explanation for this." She kneeled down before him and extended the cloth to his face.

Lach hissed when the fabric touched the red string spreading over his cheekbone. It was still rough, open and sensitive, sending his fists into tight balls. "As I said it was an accident -" he managed under another painful hissed when she tapped the pearls of blood away from his forehead. "I fell down the hill." The lie slipped easily.

The dark water splashed as the cloth was thrown inside it. Drops flew on the used and discolored wood, spreading dark dots. "Do you believe your mother a fool?" Yehime's eyes were burning, the ice had melt to let place to a building anger that made Lach's adam's apple bobbed. A look that had made him sweat more time than he would want to admit. "Look at you," she pointed at him. Lach's eyes dropped on himself, his eyes widening as if it was the first time he noticed the battered skin and the holes on his pants. He fidgeted with the hem of his poor tunic -one of the two he possessed- which was torn from the collar down. His boots were covered in mud and he unconsciously pushed them under the stool. "I saw." Yehime pointed out. "And I saw all the mud you brought inside too." he could feel her blood boiling with the dreading thought of scrapping dried mud off of the floor.

"I will to remove the mud," Lach promised quietly.

"Do not bother," she huffed before grabbing back the cloth and twisting it over the bucket until there was no drop left. "I always told your father how reckless you were." Lach frowned. "He never took that seriously. Look now where you-" she glanced around her. "Where is the basket?" Lach fidgeted with his shirt spurring a raised brow from his mother. The basket... Lach vaguely remembered leaving it at the merchant stand before he black out. It was probably in someone's greedy hands by now, the food sitting warmly inside this unknown person. "I lost it."