SILVER
Stretched out on his stomach near the edge of the water, legs splayed behind him while one bare foot kicks toe first into the ground before bouncing back up to let the other leg repeat the motion, the little boy arranges the assortment of shells and stones he's been gathering from along the beachfront all afternoon into neat rows like soldiers on the sand beneath him.
Eyeing his collection thoughtfully, he reaches out and plucks up a particularly smooth stone, turning it over in his fingers to brush the sand off its polished surface. The smoky charcoal edges are darker than the lighter grey it becomes toward the center. A fleck of seaweed sticks black and shiny to the bottom of the rock and the few droplets of water that still cling to it glow silver in the late afternoon sun. He holds it up over his head and watches the light shine through it, shades of grey that sparkle as he moves it back and forth. The boy sets it back down carefully into its place amongst the other treasures the sea has seen fit to release to his care and lets his eyes linger briefly over each object.
"Mummy?" he calls over his shoulder.
"Yeah, Johnny?" A shadow falls onto his shoulder and slides over the objects in the sand in front of him. "What have you got there, love?"
"Treasure," the fair haired boy replies with a dazzling smile up at his mother.
"Treasure indeed," she says as she sits down beside her son and rubs a hand absently over his back while surveying his haul. "You've found some beautiful shells, haven't you?"
"Yeah, but not just shells, Mum. Some rocks, and a piece of tin—and I found a bottle cap too!" He reaches out and picks up the round object, tilts it to watch the light play off the crimped edges, and holds it up for his mother to get a closer look and shyly asks, "What color is it?"
The woman's eyes crinkle at the corners, her pleasant though rather unremarkable face growing soft and lovely as she regards her young son. She looks again at the bottle cap and then stretches out one finger to tap against the tip of the boy's nose and replies, "It's green."
"Green," the boy repeats softly, a note of reverence in his voice, his eyes wide as he asks "What does green feel like?"
His mother narrows her eyes, one side of her mouth quirking up in a thoughtful fashion, and is silent for a moment. Then with a sudden smile she plucks the shiny disc from her son's hands, rubs the face of it against the sleeve of the soft shirt she's wearing, then reaches out and slides the smooth metal surface over the boy's forehead and says, "Green is cool and fresh, like walking over grass with bare feet."
John's face lights up with understanding, a smile spreading across his expressive features. He looks down over the other objects lined up in the sand before him and points to a small shell that shines a bit brighter than those on either side of it in the light of the afternoon sun and asks "What about that one? What color is it?"
"That one," his mother replies, "is pink".
"Pink," John says, pushing the word through his lips, out over his tongue and against the roof of his mouth. "Show me pink!"
Looking down at her child, she feels the familiar swell of affection rise inside her chest. Her little boy is growing up so fast—so curious about the world, so sure that she can explain things that are so very difficult to put into words.
Reaching out to clasp one of his small hands in her own, she raises it toward her face and puts her lips close to the back of his hand and says "Pink is warm and soft, like a whisper against your skin."
John giggles as his mum's breath tickles his knuckles, then turns back toward his collection and grabs the smooth dark stone he'd examined earlier. He holds it out to his mother with an expectant look on his face.
"Now this is something special, Johnny," she remarks, her eyebrows raised in surprise as she takes it from him. "It's sea glass. A broken piece of a bottle, perhaps, that's been tumbled and worn shiny by the waves and had all the rough edges smoothed out."
The boy regards the stone with an impressed nod. "Cool. What color is it?"
"It's red," and before he can even ask, she brings his hand back up to her face and says "If pink is a whisper against your skin, then red is something warmer—like a kiss!" and with a warm huff of air she presses her lips to his skin, makes an exaggerated smooching sound, and revels in the laughter that bubbles out of the little boy's mouth.
A second shadow falls over the sand in front of them, and John looks up to see his older sister hovering overhead, a scowl marring her pretty face as her gaze travels over the items laid out so carefully before her brother.
"What's all this junk, then?" she asks, sliding one foot up and toeing a few of John's prized objects out of their orderly row.
"It's not junk, Harry!" John exclaims, moving to shield the rest of his treasures away from her feet as she raises her leg to kick them out of place again.
"Harry," their mother says, a slight timbre of warning in her voice. "Johnny has collected some very interesting things, and we've just been talking about all the colors he's found. Would you like me to tell you about them too?"
Harry rolls her eyes and cocks a hip in the careless way that generations of older sisters have perfected through centuries of practice then aims a petulant glance at her brother.
"No thanks," she says with a shrug. "But you should keep telling Johnny about them, because he'll probably never get to see colors anyway."
"Yes I will Harry!" John tells her as he pushes himself up to his knees in the sand, his brows together knit in a scowl. "I'll get colors when I meet the right person just like when Mum met Dad and then I will be able to see them all. And when I can, I won't even tell you how they feel!"
"Yeah, right." Harry sneers at her little brother as she flips her long hair over one tanned shoulder. "Like you are anyone's soulmate."
"Harriet Jane Watson," their mother warns, "that's quite enough! Apologize to your brother."
Harry clenches her mouth shut and stares at the ground.
"I said, apologize to your brother," the woman repeats.
Harry squares her shoulders and feigns an indifferent shrug. "Sorry, Johnny. I'm sure there's someone very special waiting out there for you," she says with a smirk, then rolls her eyes and turns to walk away.
"Your father and I will discuss this with you later, young lady!" their mother calls after her, and she and John watch the girl walk back up the beach to join her friends.
John stares down at the items in front of him, then out toward the ocean, a frown on his face as he replays his sister's 'apology' in his mind. After a moment he feels his mother's arm slide around him and squeeze gently, her lips brushing over his temple. As they both stare out over the sea, John lays his small head against his mother's shoulder and sighs.
"Mum, what color is the ocean?"
"The ocean is so many colors, Johnny. It's cool green, and soft grey, and glittery gold. Some days it's stormy indigo, and others it's fiery turquoise, and then sometimes it's the most peaceful blue you can imagine, the kind of blue that makes you want to wrap yourself in it and sleep for days. The day I met your dad, I saw all those colors in the sea for the very first time. It was so beautiful."
John sighs and leans more heavily against his mother. He looks out over the waves—at the white hot ball of the sun in the sky and the striated clouds in shades of grey shot through with silvery rays as it sinks beneath the black line of the edge of the smoky charcoal water that churns and runs white with surf over the grey sand of the beach—and wants to believe that Harry is wrong. That one day a chance meeting with a stranger will finally let him see all the colors that his mum has worked so hard to explain to him when he asks.
"Someday," he whispers (pink) against his mother's shoulder, "I want to see all the colors in the ocean."
"Oh Johnny," she says as she kisses (red) his forehead. "You will."
A riot of dark curls framing his pale-eyed face, the boy watches as the insect flutters through the air over the expansive back garden and hovers above the rose bushes that grow alongside the gardener's shed. With the stealth of a cat, all long limbs and bony elbows, he steadily approaches as the butterfly alights softly onto the petals of the largest bloom. Holding his breath he tries to remain absolutely silent as he nears the flowering bush, carefully extending his arm toward the specimen he's intent on collecting. He stays very still and slowly tilts his head from side to side observing how the sunlight plays over the insect's flat, outstretched wings.
Starting at the edge of the upper (dorsum) quarter of the left wing and repeating the scientific terms for each segment silently to himself (apex, termen, tornus, costa), the boy examines the butterfly. He takes note of the darkest marking, the largest spot on the wing (cell), and the variations of grey in the darkly outlined segments that radiate from it (interspaces). His gaze travels to observe the perfect symmetry of the right upper wing quadrant when the butterfly's wings shiver slightly and the insect slowly folds them up into a perfect vertical plane above its slim dark body.
Seizing the chance, the boy darts out a hand and pinches the wings gently between his thumb and forefinger, mindful not to press too tightly (butterfly wings are very fragile, he's learned, both by reading about them in the heavy book he found in the library on the second floor of the house, and by pinching them so hard that they all but crumbled between his fingers the first few times he'd gone collecting). Carefully clutching his specimen, he sprints across the grass to where his older brother sits, a book in his lap and long legs crossed, a tall glass of ice water sweating on the table next to him in the afternoon sun.
"Mycroft," the little boy cries, "Look! I found one! It's a 'Vanessa atalanta'!"
The older boy looks up from his book tilts his chin rather slightly higher than necessary to regard his younger brother and the insect he's holding.
"So you have," he replies and leans forward a bit in his chair to examine the butterfly still clutched in the little boy's fingers. "It is indeed a Red Admiral, an excellent addition to your collection. Well done, Sherlock."
He reaches down and retrieves a large glass jar, unscrews the lid and holds it out for Sherlock to place his prize inside atop a layer of sawdust soaked in ethyl acetate scattered over the bottom, then screws the lid on tightly and sets the jar gently down on the table at his side. The younger boy drops to his knees and presses his face close to the jar, his nose nearly touching the smooth glass. He watches the butterfly slowly open and close its wings a few times, sees its long curled tongue dart out to taste the strange material it finds itself standing on, and knows that it won't be long before the chemicals in the sealed environment of the jar do their job and the butterfly dies. It made him sad at first, he remembers. He cried the first time Mycroft had shown him how to do this, wet tears gathering in the corners of his eyes, threatening to spill as he asked the older boy why the butterfly had to die. He recalls the way his brother looked at him, the split second of warmth in his eyes before they narrowed with a coolness that made him shiver.
"Everything dies, Sherlock. Like Father always says—caring is not an advantage," the older boy had replied, and when he heard the small sniffle from the little boy next to him added, "Besides, how would you spread and mount this specimen for your collection if it was still alive? It will be easier to study this way, don't you agree?"
He did. Of course he did. But it still made him sad.
Now the boy watches this butterfly gradually still, wings fluttering less and less frequently as the minutes wear on, until all at once it stops moving all together, its wings half way up as it falls to one side and lies stiff at the bottom of the jar.
"Mycroft," he asks, without looking at his older brother, "why is it called a Red Admiral?"
"Because it's most distinctive wing markings are red in color," the older boy replies, his eyes never leaving the page he's reading.
The younger boy looks thoughtfully at the newest member of his collection for a moment, his chin resting on his fists on the table. "What is red like, Mycroft?"
Raising an eyebrow, his eyes still fixed on the book in his lap, he says "I have no way of knowing, Sherlock. As you are well aware."
"But don't you want to know?" the little boy asks, turning his gaze from the butterfly now dead in the jar to his brother's face.
"I don't see why it matters," he replies.
"Well, I want to know," Sherlock says, his eyebrows knitting together in a frown. "I want to see all the colors. I want to see them and understand them and know why my Vanessa atalanta is called the Red Admiral."
With a sigh, Mycroft closes his book and sets it aside. He looks at the little boy frowning before him, at the mess of curls that spring out in every direction from his head, and for a brief moment he wants to reach out and run his fingers through them fondly and tame the wild spirals into some semblance of order—but he resists the urge.
"We've been over this before, Sherlock," sighs Mycroft.
"I know, I know. You can only see colors when you find your soulmate," Sherlock recites in a sing-song voice. "And you haven't found yours so you can't see them. And neither can I." The younger boy looks over at his butterfly for a moment, his forehead wrinkled in thought, and with a small gasp turns back to his brother as a smile breaks out over his face. "I know, I'll ask Mummy! She can tell me what red is like!"
"Mummy doesn't see colors either, Sherlock," Mycroft replies, wearing a look that should be far too imperious for his 13 year old face, yet suits him.
Sherlock looks confused for a moment his eyes drifting up and to the left as he takes in this new piece of information. "But Mycroft, of course she does. You said people get to see colors when they find their soulmate. Mummy's married to Father. She must know what red is."
"No, Sherlock. She doesn't. Neither does Father."
"But, you said…" Sherlock begins.
"Yes," Mycroft snaps. "I know what I said."
Sherlock flinches as though stung and Mycroft sighs to see it. He takes a deep breath, his face softening as he looks down at the little brother he has been looking after his whole life.
"Just because two people are married, it doesn't mean that they are soulmates, Sherlock." Mycroft explains, and as he says the words and watches his clever younger brother glean his meaning from them, he feels his carefully constructed cool exterior crumble slightly. "Colors are merely a different way of seeing the world around us," he continues with a sigh. "Another set of hues from light to dark in addition to the hundreds of shades of grey we all see every day. And while the concept may be novel, color certainly isn't necessary to live and learn and do meaningful work in the world."
"You sounded like Father just now," Sherlock replies sulkily.
As much as he wants to deny it, Mycroft admits to himself that he did indeed sound like their father.
Sherlock slips sideways off his knees to sit on the ground in front of the older boy, and without stopping himself this time Mycroft stretches out his arm and runs the palm of his hand over the back of his younger brother's head before settling it on his slim shoulder. Sherlock leans slightly into the pressure and looks out over the lawn, the perfectly mown blades of grass rippling in waves of grey and smoke and ash and throwing off silver light from the afternoon sun.
"Someday I will see all the colors," Sherlock whispers.
Mycroft feels an unfamiliar tug in in the pit of his stomach, a tightness in his throat that he swallows against until it eases as he follows his brother's gaze out over the grey landscape.
"Perhaps you will, Sherlock," he says quietly. "Perhaps you will."