"Hello, little girl," I said.
"What is your favourite colour?"

"Blue. It`s always been blue."

"For your eyes or for the ocean?"

"Yes. Most of the world is water.
I don`t know why they call it
Planet Earth. That`s just stupid."

"Oh, well. I see. So it must be so
wonderful, so free and easy, sailing
on the water, moving with the wind."

She smiled, looking down. "Yes, It is.
It`s always been so easy to live on
the ocean."

Then, frowning slightly, she looked up
at me and said, "But one red morning he
must have smelt the land. He got so
greedy that year, his mind like some
translucent questing root, blind and
feeling its way through the water."

"What? Oh."

"Then he stood up and told me that from
now on green was going to be his favourite
colour. His voice was loud... and harsh,
and thick with resentment, then he jumped
out of the boat and swam away."

"Really! Really? Oh, wow!"

"Yes. I don`t know why he wants to go and
discover so many things, dumb things like
America... and now I can`t find him and I`m
afraid that the Americans might discover him."

I thought I saw a tiny twinkle of laughter
in her big blue eyes just before they opened
wide and the invisible line between them was
the misty horizon between the sea and the sky.

With withering scorn, in her little girl voice,
she said, "Green. As if."

The people of the oceans are free and innocent,
yes, they are, even the pirates, who have never
had any convictions.

04/12/2018