Disclaimer: I don't own Arkarian, The Guardians of Time, or Marianne Curley.
The rain beat heavily against the awkwardly set wooden shutters, the wind throwing them against the stone wall.
"Adriene!" a harsh voice called out to the tall blonde boy trying to dry himself by the hearth. "Go outside and fix that thing. The rain is coming in."
Knowing any argument with his mother would be completely futile, the boy stomped outside, slamming the door behind him. "It's broken," he yelled through the window. "What am I supposed to do?"
"Fix it, of course. What kind of a stupid question is that? Does that idiot Florentin not teach you anything?"
"Florentin is a merchant, not a carpenter," the boy replied irritably, beginning to shiver in the cold. A bolt of light pierced the sky to his left, illuminating a sodden bundle that should have not been there. Paying no attention to his mother's fulminations, he cautiously walked over to where he decided the object should have been, and reached out with a wet hand. As his eyes adjusted to the dark, his numb fingertips brushed something smooth and warm, something that could have only been another person.
Quickly, ignoring his mother's voluble assessment of his indolence and ineptitude, Adriene kicked the wooden door open, and carried the foundling into his home.
"What are you doing? Adriene?"
The boy laid the child in front of the fire, stripping him of his drenched, muddy clothes. A pale face came into view, framed by wet strands of fair hair. He appeared unconscious. Adriene's mother, finally silent, kneeled next to him, feeling his forehead. It was burning with fever. She told her son to fetch a blanket while she herself proceeded to peel the child's soaked clothes off his frail body. Gently, frowning at the livid bruises covering the thin, waxen arms, the woman pulled off the child's stained and frayed undershirt. Her son stopped short, a woolen blanket and a clean, coarse rag in his hand, staring at the swollen skin surrounding an angry red gash on the child's skinny chest. Without saying a word, he dried the boy and wrapped him up in the blanket, thrusting the rag out of the window and, once sufficiently wet, folding it over the child's febrile forehead.
"How can someone do that to a child?" he hissed at his mother, pacing the room.
She sighed. "It's a cruel, chaotic world."