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1859
Mycroft sat his desk continuing his studies through his vacation from Eaton. He had to write his Latin. Well... Had to... Really he was fluent by now but wanted to learn it better. He was also working on his Greek, French, and mathematics. He was years ahead at Eton, and his father spoke about getting him a clerkship in the government soon, which would mostly be running errands and passing messages, but he’d move up quickly.
It was still vacation in August, which was why Sherlock was running about the garden watching the bees.
Mycroft smiled a moment thinking of the apis mellifera incident a few years ago. Sherlock brought that up every time Mycroft argued his at first confusing observations.
Sherlock was six now, yet still as wildly curious since the day he was born. Highly observant, intelligent, energetic, and annoying, although Mycroft loved him dearly. He had more patience for anyone else than his little brother since the lad tested it constantly, but he tried all the more for Sherlock.
Today specifically their mother found Sherlock dirty from exploring the garden, and the nanny was tutting about to get him washed. And to keep him busy their Father gave him some scientific journals.
Which Sherlock took into Mycroft’s room before he plopped down on the floor beside Mycroft’s desk.
Thankfully, he was silent for...
Exactly five minutes.
And then the deluge began.
Mycroft was sure he withstood more questions than Sherlock’s governess.
“Mycroft?”
He put down his pencil and sighed. “Yes, Sherlock?”
“How much does the earth weigh?”
“Erm...” He raised an eyebrow.
“You don’t know.”
“Of course, I know Sherlock.”
“Then what is it?”
“It’s...” He read this somewhere. “Over 5 quintillion tons at least.”
“Wowww.... what’s quintillion?” His brow furrowed.
“It’s like a million, except instead of 6 zeros, there’s 18.”
“18!” His jaw dropped.
Mycroft smiled. His brother was easily impressed, and it was immensely endearing. “Yes.” He turned back to his Latin and swapped it for Greek.
“Does the sun go around us or do we go around the sun?”
Mycroft looked at his paper for a moment, biting his cheek. He wasn’t going to get anything done, was he?
“Mycroft?”
“I heard you, Sherlock. We go around the sun.”
“How do you know?”
“Because people have studied it, by making experiments like Father does. Aristarchus of Samos suggested and theorised it, but because of the arrogance of man, Aristotle’s ideas of the opposite took more hold than the truth. Later though, Copernicus mathematically proved Aristarchus’ ideas. And then Newton, Kepler, and Galileo proved it through practical application, the telescopes. They put the mathematics into practice.”
He nodded, drawing his brow in and looking at the floor.
Mycroft observed him for a few moments before slowly turning his head back to his Greek. What was the word for “time” again? He was copying Greek phrases from memory.
“Mycroft?” came the small voice after a few minutes.
“Hm?”
“Mycroft!” Sherlock nudged his chair.
“Yes, Sherlock,” he said perhaps more forcefully than he meant to.
He fidgeted.
“What is it, brother dear?” he said more gently.
“Why is the sky blue, brother dear?”
Mycroft shifted his chair. “Come here.”
Sherlock climbed onto his chair and into his lap.
“The sky is blue because light is made up of a spectrum of colors.”
“A rainbow!”
“Yes, a rainbow. But not all the colors make it through to us, you see. There’s a paper a man published a few weeks ago about how white light shown through a glass reflects more blue light than red because the water particles makes the light bounce.”
“Bounce?”
“Yes, it bounces off dust, water, gas. And it’s all in the atmosphere too.”
“But why does the blue make it, not the red?”
“Well, the colors come in different lengths. They’re not all the same. Blue has shorter wavelengths so it bounces more, although ‘scatters’ is the more scientific term. Blue and purple bounce off faster than say, red, which has a lower scattering frequency or bouncing speed. That’s why we only see it at sunset because red travels farther than blue and purple wavelengths.”
“Ohhh.” He nodded sagely.
“Longer distance to travel means that by the time the blue light’s made it, it’s been all scattered away.”
“So they all race, but red wins when the sun goes down, and blue wins during the day.”
Mycroft tried not to laugh and cleared his throat, taking in a breath before answering. “Yes, Sherlock, you could put it that way.”
“All right.”
“Do you have any other questions?”
“No.” He shook his head.
“Okay. I’m going to study. I’d appreciate a little silence, so keep reading, hm?”
He nodded and slipped back off to the journals on the floor.
He did say ‘a little’ silence, so Mycroft got another ten minutes before more questions came.
How do fish know how to swim? Instinct, genes with prior instruction.
How do they breath? Gills. Fish lungs.
Is water wet? No, water makes things wet. But water itself cannot be covered in what constitutes its matter.
What’s lightning? A flow of negative charges meeting the positive charges on the ground because the water becomes too dense during thunderstorms. Sherlock looked far off after Mycroft told him that lighting visually shot up from the ground. It bought him another ten minutes before a couple more.
Why has less than 1% of the ocean been explored? Are humans that mindless? Yes, Sherlock.
If there are oxygen atoms in water, why can’t we breath underwater? Yes, and because ingesting water means we get oxygen along with hydrogen and that would choke our lungs.
Why do male seahorses give birth? Because women can’t do all the work, and they’re biologically created to shoulder some of the weight.
If bacon is called bacon and cookies are called cookies, why do we cook bacon and bake cookies? Now that took circular semantics that exhausted Mycroft until he’d finally decided to answer ridiculously.
“If celery is 90% water, is the ocean 10% celery?” He must’ve read that in the journals Father had left lying around.
He leaned back and nodded to the side. “Yes, that’s definitely how percentages and fractions work, and yes, the ocean is 10% celery, which is why we cannot drink ocean water, for we would choke on the celery.” He bit his lip to stop from laughing again. He had almost done nothing in a whole hour. Oh, God. He hoped that was it.
“Mycroft...”
“Yes, brother dearest?” he said, brow furrowed in frustration and yet his mouth had a fond turn to it.
“Do you know everything?”
He tilted his head. “No.”
“Okay.”
Mycroft turned back to his Greek for the 16th time, and then he heard some quiet breathing. Sherlock lay curled on top of the journals, and Mycroft melted. He stood and picked the lad up, laying him on his bed and pulling an afghan over him. Then he put the journals on his desk and worked on his mathematics until dinner.
His little brother overwhelmed him most of the time, but Mycroft knew Sherlock was brilliant, far ahead of his time, different than other children. He wanted to understand things and was fascinated by new information, a good trait. Sherlock had a different intelligence than Mycroft that ended up confusing or straight up frustrated him. Regardless, he’d do his best to create that space for Sherlock, to be patient and understanding. His curiosity would only lead him to learning more, take him a different path than Mycroft. And as much as he took up Mycroft’s time, the elder missed him a lot at Eton. So perhaps being taken up by a million questions wasn’t quite as bad. It was worth it, to spend time with the lad and give him the attention hardly anyone could bare to give. He loved his little brother, and probably understood him more than most. And despite how he felt now, he knew that when he’d be off working in London one day while his brother was at boarding school, he would miss it all, even all those millions of questions.