Daddy, Why Is The Ocean Green?
Belen
Summary: Another Madeline T'Lin Reed drabble or perhaps short story. A little girl has a question of her daddy.
Pairing and Rating: T'Pol/Reed, G
Warning: AU
Note: PWP
"Daddy, why is the ocean green?" the three-year old girl frowned as she looked at the video of the ocean waves crashing on the beach. She'd never actually been to a planet similar to Earth, but both her parents were intent on making sure she understood all types of environments. Lately questions about 'colors' had been occupying her interest.
"I thought oceans were blue," she continued, "why is that green?" Madeline was a very focused little child and would not stop asking until she received a 'good' answer.
T'Pol looked up from the report she was composing, wondering how Malcolm would explain this to a three-year old child.
"Maddie, dearest, come sit here and I'll tell you . . ." Malcolm gestured for her to sit down as they both looked at the screen. "Now you know that on planets they have stars that are called 'suns' and the sun on each planet makes the day bright so that the colors can be seen."
Madeline put her thumb in her mouth as she thought about the idea. "Okay . . ." she managed to say. She had even been learning how to read color words, and thought that her brown teddy 'selat-bear' was very pretty.
"Now, on Earth the sun is a very nice yellow – yellow is such a happy color – don't you think?" And Malcolm Reed had a memory of the very same thing he told a woman with the mind of a two-year old almost twenty-five years before as he tried to get her to color with yellow and not just brown. As a thirteen year old, Malcolm had helped at his church with mentally impaired adults; the woman was almost fifty he remembered.
And Maddie was so much more advanced at three . . . "Well, at night the sun goes to bed in the ocean which is sometimes blue, like you said, but you know the color yellow washes off the sun and makes the ocean green in places. Here let me show you how that works . . ." And he took one of her crayons and colored a nice round sun. "See that's nice and yellow. Now . . ." Then with a flourish he showed her the blue crayon, "The blue is like the ocean water." And he covered the yellow color with the blue and magically, the color green appeared.
"Daddy, you made it green," Maddie squealed. She held the paper up to her chest; this was going in her special box – her daddy made yellow and blue turn green. It was magic.
T'Pol's left eyebrow went up, but an amused glint appeared in her eyes. "I think perhaps you will get to explain to Madeline's teachers why she has such an interesting view of the natural world, don't you think?"
Malcolm smiled. "I look forward to it!"
