Standard disclaimers apply. I don't own any of these characters, please don't sue.
-M-
His feet landed in the soft sand with a satisfying thump, and MacGyver squinted against the bright white glare and looked beyond it, to where a hazy, deep blue sky met an impossibly flat line of deeper blue plain.
A hand reached down for his, and Angus absently took it. Her fingers were cool, almost the same temperature as the sand if he burrowed his toes deep enough, and he took a few steps after her, then kicked a little mound of sand. It scattered very unsatisfyingly, as soft as a blanket, and he stared at the stuff for a moment before another hand tapped his shoulder.
"Angus, do you know what a pendulum is?"
"No," he said, not bothering to look up, but he obediently reached up and his other hand was taken. His father's hand was warm, and held him firmly, as if they were about to cross a street. He looked then, checking both ways, but he only saw other people walking, carrying brightly colored towels and chairs and bags.
There weren't any vehicles, but ahead of him were wide tire tracks in the sand. He could see the tread pattern clearly in the soft stuff.
"A pendulum is a weight, attached to a pivot point so that it can swing," his father explained. "And when it gets swung away from its equilibrium point by an outside force, it becomes subject to a restoring force that accelerates it back towards that equilibrium point."
"And now daddy is going to try to explain angles and amplitude, because he's silly. The really important thing to remember is this."
Angus felt both his hands being lifted up higher, way over his head, and he laughed when he was picked right off his feet, his toes dangling in the sand.
"When you swing backwards, you accelerate forward." Angus giggled again as the hands holding his swung him back and forth. Every time they swung him back, he went faster and faster forward, up towards the sky.
"And if you put your toes in the sand –"
On the next forward swing, they lowered him just a little, and his feet plowed through a little hill of sand. It went flying, even higher than he did, scattering in all directions, and Angus laughed in delight.
"Then you can kick the sand really far."
This repeated several more times, much to his joy, and he found that if he actually kicked when he came in contact with the sand, he was able to make it go even higher.
"Okay, son, that's enough." His father was using his 'settle down' tone, which was a huge disappointment, because this was so much fun! He tried to hang on as they set him back down on his feet, but neither hand held tightly enough to let him pull himself up, and Angus gave the next sand dune a kick, rearing his leg back really far to see if he could swing it the same way they had swung him.
It was way better than his first attempt, but not nearly as successful as the others.
"Careful not to kick sand on other people, okay?"
He nodded. They had walked far enough that they had caught up to other people, sitting out on towels, all watching the ocean.
The ocean was a large body of water that covered most of the Earth's surface. And even though it was a perfectly flat line against the horizon, it wasn't still at all.
It was moving.
His hands were released, so his parents could set down all the things they were carrying, and Angus stayed nearby, digging his toes into the sand and watching the water. It rushed towards him, like someone had just dumped out a giant bucket, but then it kind of rolled to a stop, and ran back the way it had come. Only to be shoved forward again. Like someone kept picking up the same cup of water, and tilting it back and forth.
Angus looked up and down the line of water, trying to figure out where that was happening.
Behind him, he heard a towel being shaken out, and the rattle of the bright green pail that had been teasing him from the trunk the whole drive. And it was a long drive, it had been hours and hours and his parents had refused to tell him what was in it. He turned, trying to be subtle, and found his mother sitting on a blue and white stripped towel, holding the green pail and frowning.
"Sweetie, I think the pail is broken." She shook it, and things rattled inside. "I guess we should take it back to the car."
"Oh, I think you might be right. That's a shame . . ." His father laid his green and white striped towel on the sand beside her, coming over and peering into the bucket.
Not wanting to be left out, Angus hurried over. "I can see!"
His mother, still frowning, looked deeper in to the bucket. "And all these little parts, I wonder what they're for . . ."
Angus ducked between his parents, almost colliding with his mother's shoulder, and wrapped his arms around her neck for stability as much as to see what she was looking at so intently. It was a light green pail, lighter than grass, and inside were a bright yellow shovel, and a bright orange little rake, and a little blue pail, and a little red pail.
His mother shifted the bucket so he could see inside more clearly, and he reached in and took out the little red pail. It looked like the turret on the medieval castle he had at home!
"It's not broken," he declared, turning it over in his hands, "See? It's a castle!"
"I see," she agreed solemnly. "But how can we have a castle with only one corner and one wall?"
Angus reached in and took out the little blue pail. It was shaped just like the wall of the castle, with flat teeth on top. He inspected them for a moment, turning them upside down. They sat in the sand very sturdily, but they were very light, and a breeze almost blew one over.
He needed it to be heavier.
Angus looked back into the pail, and his mother handed it to him. There was a shovel and a rake. There was no dirt, only sand, and he quickly got to work building a little hill, so the wind wouldn't blow and knock over the wall piece and turret piece.
By the time he'd constructed his little one-walled castle, his mother had stretched out on her towel, with another one rolled up behind her neck. She was wearing a blue swimming suit, and a very wide white-brimmed hat. Underneath it was still the navy towel she always wrapped around her head – to keep it from getting sunburnt, she said – and her legs were almost the same color as the sand.
Her smile, though, was big and wide, and Angus smiled back.
His father was no longer on his towel.
Angus glanced up, trying to pick him out of the other people. His father was wearing green swimming trunks, just like his, but there were a lot of blond men running around in green shorts. His gaze fell onto someone much more interesting – a boy. He was definitely older, and he was filling up a bucket with sand. As Angus watched, he up-ended the bucket lightning quick, and then he carefully picked the bucket up off the sand. The sand held the shape of the bucket!
Then the boy smashed his hand down into it, and it disintegrated back into tiny granules.
Angus glanced back down at the little red turret shaped pail, and then he scooped up part of his hill into it. When it was full, he used the shovel to flatten the top, so that it would sit on the ground all level, and then he flipped it over as fast as he could.
Then he waited a second, and carefully pulled up the pail.
For just a split second, it looked like a castle turret, but then the top part slipped apart and slid down the side, resulting in a rather misshapen mound of sand.
Angus chanced a glance at his mother, who was looking at the little mound with an equally puzzled expression.
"Hmm," she said.
"Hmm," he agreed.
He tried the turret, really packing the sand in this time, but ended up with the same result. The sand was way too soft and loose to hold the shape.
So how had that boy done it?
Angus glanced up, trying to pick out the other boy from the growing number of people around them, and he saw his father returning, with three styrofoam cups. All three had tiny colorful decorations poking out of the tops. The red one daddy gave to mommy, and the blue one was offered to him.
Angus dropped the turret and came over, taking it carefully. It was heavier than he thought it would be, and the blue decoration was a tiny little umbrella. The inside of the drink was red.
It was a Slurpee!
"Thank you!" Angus managed around the mouthful of flavored ice. His father had just settled back onto his towel, watching his mother, and Angus glanced between them. She was looking at the cup.
"Honey, I don't think I'm supposed to mix this with the -"
His daddy smiled at her. "It's a special occasion."
Angus hadn't quite figured out what the word 'occasion' meant, but they'd used it enough that he was starting to associate it with surprises and treats. Last week they had a special occasion and got hamburgers. And the week before that his parents had gotten dressed up and Wendy had come over to watch him while they went 'out' for a special occasion. They had stayed out so late that Angus had fallen asleep waiting for them, and when he woke up the next morning and raced into their bedroom to make sure they were there, they had both still been in the bed! They'd even let him come snuggle with them.
"Yeah! It's a special occasion!" Angus chirped, and he threw his arms wide, almost forgetting about the slurpee in his hand. "We're at the beech!"
His father gave him a stern look. "Try to keep it down to a dull roar, Angus."
"But it's the 'beech'," his mother repeated teasingly, and Angus grinned and sucked another centimeter down off the slurpee.
Her smile faltered, turning a little more serious, like his father's look, but then they tapped their cups together, and leaned in close, and Angus made his disgust known vocally and turned back to his aborted castle turret. He set the cup down in the sand, making sure it wouldn't spill, and set about trying to figure out how to make the sand stay.
It didn't really matter how hard he mashed it into the turret pail, or how gently and slowly he took the pail off the sand, or even how hard he slammed it down when he upended it. In fact, the harder he did that, the faster it fell apart. He'd picked up his cup for a second time before he noticed.
Sand was sticking to the bottom of it.
Angus brushed the clumping sand off the bottom of it, which then stuck to his fingers, and he absently wiped them off on his arm to continue drinking his slurpee before he realized that the sand was sticky.
He glanced down. It was the same sand. All the sand around him looked exactly the same. He set the cup down, then picked it back up, but no new sand stuck to it. He went to grab the sticky sand off his arm, but it disintegrated as he rubbed it, and fell back to the ground.
"I think our little genius has figured it out."
Angus glanced up at his parents, who were still sitting close together, watching him, and he frowned at them, suddenly embarrassed.
"Stop looking at me!" he complained, and turned his back a little, staring at the turret in his hands.
He had to make the sand sticky. And the only sticky sand had been on the bottom of his cup.
Angus glanced at the cup again, and picked it back up, looking. A little sand was sticking to the side. He wiped off the sand, and a little drop of water that was collecting on the side of the cool styrofoam.
Mud.
If you mixed water and dirt, it made mud, which was way stickier than just dirt! But too much water made it not sticky at all. Otherwise baths wouldn't work.
So he needed to add water. Just not a lot of it.
Angus looked at the big pail, and then at the ocean. There was definitely plenty of water nearby . . .
"I do believe you're right," his father said, and then cleared his throat. "Do you want to go down to the water, Angus?"
He watched it a second, then turned back and nodded, and his father untangled his long, thin legs and stood up. "How about you leave the pail for now, and we'll go observe the waves." Then he turned to mommy, and offered her a hand.
His mother shook her head. "No, I – I can't."
His father's smile faltered. "Are you tired? We can –"
"No, no, don't be silly! We just got here." She beamed up at him. "It's a gorgeous day, and the sun feels wonderful. Go. Go play. I'll keep the towel thieves away."
Angus blinked at both of them, and then glanced around at the other people. There were lots of them, all walking around, some with towels, some without. And unlike his parents, who were wearing swimming suits that matched their towels – and his mommy always wrote their name on everything, but he couldn't tell –
"Your mother's teasing, Angus. No one's going to steal our towels." His father was just behind him, and ruffled his hair. "Let's go check out those waves."
He obediently left the pail, shovel, rake, and castle pieces and slogged through the sand beside his father. They passed several other people, also stretched out on towels, and Angus scanned them for their tags, and the black marker that would have their names.
"Do you know what makes ocean waves?"
Angus shook his head, and focused on the water. Even though it was clearly blue, when it spilled up the beach, it looked white and bubbly, and then when it retreated it looked brown, like the sand. There were things floating in it too, brown and green like snakes.
"Do you know what makes tree branches move?"
He felt himself nodding. "The wind."
"That's right." They stopped right where the sand went from laying in dunes to being very smooth and flat. As Angus watched, the water rushed over, spilling up the sand, and it stopped a few inches from his toes.
"It's the same with water. The wind is what makes the water move in waves."
Confused, Angus looked up at his father, who was staring out at the ocean with a strange expression on his face. "The energy in the wind transfers to the surface of the water through friction. You see, the wind blows across the surface, and just like with leaves, or grass, or little boys," and he glanced down at him, "molecules of air collide with molecules of water, and they push against one another."
He didn't really understand half of what his father said, and sometimes he worried that he disappointed his father when that happened, but he liked to listen to him explain things. He was always so earnest, and he always knew the answer to every question.
Angus turned back to the ocean, feeling the breeze on his face, and he watched the next wave come towards them. This one came closer, and the water rushed over his feet.
Angus yelped, and grabbed his father's hand. "Cold!"
He heard his father's low chuckle. "You think so?"
"Yeah!" He danced away from the next wave, racing it backwards as it approached – but not letting go of his father's hand. "It's freezing!"
"So it's as cold as your slurpee?"
Angus thought about a second. "No."
"No. So it must be warmer than freezing."
"Not a lot," Angus muttered.
"You don't want to get in it?"
Another wave came by, and Angus moved so just his toes got barely touched. It wasn't nearly as cold as it had first felt, but it was certainly cold.
"All of those people seem to like it."
He raised his eyes, looking at all the people in the water. He could hear them laughing and talking. Further out, some people seemed to be swimming, but the rest were standing in waist-deep water, squealing and laughing when a wave would come and slap into them.
"How come it's so cold, when the sun is so hot?"
He heard his father gust out a sigh. "You know when you get a glass of water from the sink?"
Angus squinted up at him and nodded.
"If you use the cold water tap, the water comes out cool, doesn't it."
He nodded again.
"But if you let that glass of water sit on the table for a while, what happens?"
He gave that some thought. "Then you tell me to finish drinking it."
His father's teaching face flickered momentarily. "I do. And when you do drink the rest of it, is it as cool as it was when it first came out of the faucet?"
He shook his head.
"Why do you think that is?"
Angus squirmed a little, and dug his toes into the wet sand. It was definitely too wet to make a good castle.
"It warms up because the air is warmer than the water, and some of the heat energy in the air is transferred into the glass. How quickly that happens depends on the thermal conductivity of the materials in question, the surface area of the objects in contact, the temperature difference between them . . ." He trailed off. "And the Pacific is much colder than the Atlantic because the ocean's currents are traveling from the Arctic – the North Pole."
Angus looked at the water with new eyes. "It's from the North Pole?"
"Oh yes. This water has traveled all over the world."
Santa could have swum in this water.
The next wave was a big one, and it washed over his feet again, but this time it didn't feel nearly as cold as it had the first time. He inched forward a step, and his father followed him.
"Does it rain on the ocean?"
His father looked out across the water. "What do you think?"
Angus saw some fluffy white clouds, way out on the horizon. "Yes?"
"Yes. It rains almost everywhere on Earth. And the ocean covers 71% of the entire surface of the earth."
"So it rains a lot," Angus decided. He took another step. The water rushed up around his shins, and he felt the sand shift underneath his feet as the water retreated.
It reminded him of the other things he'd seen in the water. "How many fish are there?"
"Well, kiddo, we don't really know. The ocean is roughly thirty six thousand feet deep in the Mariana Trench. Do you know what Mt. Everest looks like?"
Angus took another step into the water, and his father followed him.
"If you took that mountain, and you turned it upside down and put it in the ocean, it wouldn't touch the bottom."
He blinked up at his father with wide eyes. Then he hung onto his hand a little tighter.
His father didn't seem to notice. "We've only explored maybe 8% of the oceans of the world. Now, if the oceans cover 71% of the earth, and we've only explored 8% of the ocean, how many percent of the ocean remains for you to explore?"
Angus wasn't entire sure he wanted to explore any more of this one, but he took another few steps in. The water was at his shins all the time now, and the waves brought it up all the way to his waist. He really didn't like the way the sand shifted under his feet.
"Well, son?"
Angus grabbed onto his father's hand tighter still. "If I fall in, will I float?"
"Yes." His father's voice was quite sure. "You would float. Do you want to see?"
A higher wave was sweeping up, Angus could see that it was taller than some of the others, and he clung to his father's leg and braced himself. It splashed all the way up to his chest, and Angus spluttered.
It didn't taste like bathwater at all. It was salty.
His father reached down and picked him up, and Angus wrapped his arms around his father's neck and clung to him. From his new perch, the water barely touched his feet, and when it came by, it didn't seem to affect his father at all.
"What's wrong, Angus? There's nothing to be afraid of."
"There's sharks," he said, his voice small. If the ocean was so big and so wide and so deep, even if he floated at the top of it, no one knew how many sharks were in it. It wasn't clear, so he couldn't see what was in it. He couldn't even see his father's feet in the water.
"Oh, sharks? Sharks are nothing to be afraid of."
Angus leaned away just to look at his father incredulously. "They have huge teeth!"
"They should. They're dinosaurs."
Angus stared at him. "Nuh-uh."
"Nuh-uh isn't a word, Angus. It's no. And don't contradict."
He was still too scared to let go of daddy, so he didn't say anything else, even though everyone knew the dinosaurs had all been wiped out by an asteroid a bajillion years ago.
"Sharks haven't changed much since the Silurian Period. A lot of life survived in the oceans, even though life on the surface was wiped out by various extinction events. There are five that we know of, and the sixth one is happening right now."
He didn't know what extinction meant, though he had heard it mentioned related to dinosaurs, and he just stared at his father. "So . . . all the sharks are really old?"
His father laughed; he could feel it rumble out of his chest. "No, Angus. Sharks are so well evolved, even though the world changed around them, they were able to adapt. Do you know what adapting is?"
Water lapped at his feet, but the waves were no match for his father, and Angus looked over his shoulder, trying to pick out his mom. "No."
He felt his father sigh. "Adapting is making adjustments to meet new conditions. Like right now. You're adapting to the cold water."
To make his point, his father took several more steps into the ocean. The water came up to his father's chest, splashing up against his back, but this time it didn't frighten him. His father was a firm presence, warm despite the cool water, holding him up.
"When you get a little older, we'll give you swimming lessons. And you'll have to adapt the way you move from walking on the ground to swimming through the water."
He father shifted him to a hip, and Angus permitted it, so that he was only hanging onto his father with one arm – but still tightly. They watched the next wave coming up.
"This one looks like a big one," his father observed. "If it comes up to your face, hold your breath and close your eyes, just like you do in the tub. Okay?"
He nodded a little, watching the wave come closer, and closer, and swell up higher, and higher, and then it was there, and Angus squeezed his eyes shut and hung onto his father. Daddy's strong arm held him firmly, he stayed grounded and didn't move away like the sand did. The water was gone almost as fast as it came, like someone had dumped a bucket of water over him, and Angus shook the water out of his eyes and squinted them open.
His father was completely soaked, his hair flat against his head, and he was wearing a lopsided grin. "Well, that wave was higher than I originally thought," he said.
Angus looked at him, then burst out giggling.
His father chuckled as well, and Angus ducked his against his father's shoulder. The ocean had a tangy odor to it, but underneath it he smelled sunscreen and the same scent that was on his father's pillow – kind of citrusy and spicy.
"Bet that wasn't as scary as you thought it was going to be."
Mutely, he shook his head into his father's neck.
The next wave was much smaller, and he felt his father's arm loosen around him as it hit. There was a strange little sensation of bobbing up and down, and Angus scrambled to get his arm back around his father's neck, but he found that his father's arm hadn't gone far, and the water swept him back into it.
"See? You floated."
It took several more tries before he was comfortable with that, but his father had been right. He floated. He even pushed himself away from daddy, hanging onto his arm but letting his legs go free in the water, and even though he couldn't touch the bottom, and the next wave came, he bobbed up with it, and then dropped down when the water dropped down.
Angus beamed up at his father. "I floated!"
"You weigh a lot less than the water your body displaces. As long as that constant remains true, you're always going to float."
It wasn't quite the celebration that he felt like he deserved, but Angus was still very proud of himself. "I 'dapted!"
"You adapted," his father corrected. "And just think. if you had been too afraid to come out here with me, you never would have known that it wasn't as scary as you thought it was going to be."
Angus looked up, watching for the next wave, almost wishing it was a bigger one. That gave him a better rise and drop when he floated.
"Son . . . you and I, we're going to have to adapt to some changes soon."
The wave came and went, and Angus floated there, still hanging into his father's arm. His daddy was looking out at the horizon. "Just like this. It's not going to be as scary as it seems."
Angus followed his gaze, but all he saw was another wave. It didn't look too big.
"It's not scary," he told his father.
His father smiled, but it looked sad. "Not so worried about the sharks anymore?"
"Dinosaurs," Angus corrected. His father broke into a startled laugh.
"So dinosaurs aren't as scary as sharks?"
Angus wasn't sure why he had made his father laugh, but it didn't happen as often as it used to, and he really liked it. "Nope."
His father's expression settled back into something closer to stern. "Nope is hardly better than 'nuh-uh.'"
Angus shrugged. "Mommy says it."
His father's expression changed, then, but Angus barely had any time to look at it before water rushed over them, into his mouth, into his nose. He felt his father's arms wrap around him tightly, pulling him in a different direction than the rushing water, and then his head broke the surface. Angus shook his head and coughed out the water.
It still tasted salty. And a little like boogers. He didn't like it.
A strong hand rubbed his back. "You okay, Angus?"
He shook his head, trying to get the water out of his eyes. "I'm okay." He said it quickly, afraid that anything else was the wrong answer. His father almost never picked him up anymore, almost never laughed anymore, and he wanted to stay there forever.
It was a special occasion.
And even though he said he was okay, his father started walking back towards the shore, still holding him. "Let's get out and warm up a little. I bet your mother would love to help us build a sandcastle."
Angus tightened his arms a little. "Yeah. Mommy's having a good day today."
He felt a little shudder run through his father's chest. "Yes she is." His voice was brisk.
He knew he was going to be put down as soon as the water was shallow enough, and Angus struggled to find a reason to stay where he was. "Can we come back tomorrow?"
His father's head turned towards him a little, a few droplets of warm water rolling off his face. "You like the beach?"
Angus nodded. "I like this."
He felt his father shiver a little. "I do too, son." But then the arms around him loosened, and his voice got stronger again. "Down you go, Angus. Why don't you run and get your pail, and we'll fill it up."
Despite the fact that he didn't let go, his father pulled his arms loose and let him slither to the ground. The water was only up to his shins, and without his father to lean against, the breeze seemed colder than the water. His father turned around, looking back out towards the ocean, which meant it was the end of the conversation, and Angus reluctantly splashed out of the water, looking for his mother, and wondering why he suddenly wanted to cry.
"Angus."
He looked up, surprised to find Jack standing at his shoulder. The man's wetsuit top was still hanging from his waist, and his medallion picked up the rising sun in a perfect reflection of brilliant gold.
"You okay?"
Mac shook himself, then reached back and grabbed the long neoprene zipper pull, zipping up his own shorty. The board felt heavy but well-balanced under his arm, and the waves were absolutely perfect. Glassy, beautiful smooth surface, just a touch of spray coming off the lip, gorgeous hollow a-frame on every third one.
"Better than okay." He gave his partner a cock-eyed grin. "It's crankin' out there, dude."
Jack winced at the far-too-perfect surfer imitation. "Man, I feel like you just dropped thirty IQ points right there."
"Then he's still got thirty more than you," Bozer observed, coming up behind them already fully suited up. He clapped Mac on the back, and the blond grinned wider.
"Let's do it. Surf's up!"
Then he whooped and sprinted straight into the spray.
Jack watched him go with a sour expression, while Bozer started chuckling. "Yep. That's Mac."
Before Bozer could join him, Jack put out a hand. "Just . . . to be clear here, Mac's never had, I dunno, a near drownin' incident or somethin'?"
Wilt's eyebrows rose in confusion, and he dropped one end of his surfboard to the sand, leaning on it a little. "Uh . . . no, not that I know of . . ." But then his face shrank back down to its normal size. "Oh, you mean his whole 'communin' with the sea spirits' thing?"
Jack gestured. "The thousand yard stare at the horizon?"
But Bozer was just nodding. "Yeah. Have you never seen him do that? Every time we come to the beach, he watches the waves for a few minutes. Sometimes you'll catch him doin' it at the fire pit, too, watching the flames, but literally every time we hit the beach. I just give him a few to do whatever he's doin', and he's good." Bozer indicated Mac, who was now far out enough that he was flat on the board, paddling out past the break.
"And if we don't follow him, he's gonna catch every good wave and all we're gonna get is chowder."
-M-
I thought I would wrap this one up with something a little cute, a little sentimental, and as close as I can ever get the Turkey Day universe to canon now that we've all seen the Season Two finale. Turkey Day is definitely its own little AU now, and my guess on Oversight was wrong. Whoops.
I had been planning to cover Matty and Jack's falling out as a Trimming, so that I didn't have to spell it out in the sequel, but after plotting the sequel out chronologically, I realized that I can tell the entire Matty/Jack falling out, possibly better, in the Turkey Day sequel itself. So this is the last Trimming, barring anything else popping to mind (or requested.)
I'm also not going to make you wait until NaNoWriMo for that sequel, mainly because I'm afraid Turkey Day will be WAY far off canon by the time the third season starts, so the next thing you see from me will either be the sequel itself, or a standalone story like Ground Rules.