[open post -- winged and once-winged insects]

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad has collected every insect guide he could find in the mansion's library, and now he is camped out in a laboratory it seems to have created particularly for him and Susan -- the room has its own microscope, so that he can stop borrowing Claudius', and every single shelf is filled with glass habitats or mesh tents for keeping insects.

With his single-minded determination, he has filled many of them -- the tents house carefully potted foot-high milkweeds with tiny butterfly eggs affixed to their leaves, or potato plants he hopes will soon harbor potato beetles, or butterflies resting on the mesh. In the glass habitats there are millipedes, gleaming tenebrionid beetles, huge and bumbling scarabs, the dogbane leaf beetle Lancelot helped him capture, shiny blister beetles, leafhoppers in every shade of green, a pair of picasso bugs, an mantis he found in the greenhouse pretending to be an orchid flower.

Many of these insects stay only long enough to be identified and documented. Galahad and Susan between them take careful notes, make drawings, take pictures. When possible, they identify to species; more often, they identify genera or family, country of origin if they're lucky. Then they let their subjects go again. Neither of them has the time nor the inclination to feed and care for the immense diversity of insects living on the mansion's grounds. Potato beetles are one thing, but catching other tiny insects for the tiger beetles every morning is unsustainable. Galahad doesn't mind. Once he has a picture and the notes, the insect is saved, even if they don't see it again.

In the morning he trains with Lan Wangji, so it's an afternoon now when he's perched on a stool in front of the microscope, inspecting a chlaenius beetle to see whether it's possible to confirm a species. Unfortunately, these beetles are too fast and squirmy to put on a slide alive, so he's ethered it first. Now he's working diligently on his sketch, his pale head bowed as he studies the tiny body.

[Open especially to anyone who needs to be reassured that Galahad is back after the mod event and he's just fine now]

Comments

[lightbearinglord]

"Thank you for telling me," Lan Wangji says, once it becomes obvious that the television is fixed on Aornis' face and that there is no more to see. He studies it as closely as he can, committing it to memory. The image is not as clear as he would like it to be, but it is clearer than anything that was ever available to him during any night-hunt investigation throughout his life. It is clearer than memory.

[summerdude]

"You know what to do with this?" Magnus asks, face mashed against Galahad's shoulder. He was her, and then when he was himself again she tried to kill him and then actually killed Shen Yuan.

[onthewillowsthere]

He'd been about to ask a similar question, but instead he begins to pet Magnus' hair, watching Lan Wangji closely for his answer.

[lightbearinglord]

He needs to speak with Claudius, but surely that goes without saying. Whatever moves they make will need to be undertaken carefully, but there must be a reason that Shen Yuan's spirit is so insistent on showing them this imagery, on the still portrait of Aornis herself and all the details of her face. "Thursday looks just like her. Only the hair is different." He glances to the side to see Magnus curled against Galahad. "We need to be certain, and we need to be cautious. We can't forget this."

[onthewillowsthere]

He tries to remember the other differences of the people he met. "Lan Zhan was an android. And Shen Yuan had spectacles."

[summerdude]

Magnus peeks one eye out and squints. "She does look like -- her."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you remember her?"

[lightbearinglord]

For once impatient, Lan Wangji is in the midst of unleashing a small amount of sword qi to knock a side table closer to him from across the game room. At the question, though, he stops and looks at Magnus. He is curious, too, knowing how Magnus was targeted and why.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan flips to a blank page in her field notebook and starts jotting down their observations. "Grantaire seemed rather the same," she says, thoughtfully.

[onthewillowsthere]

He blinks at her, surprised. "Were you able to tell how he was an Evil Twin?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"He came from the future," she says, and purses her lips. "And he seemed marginally less biddable."

[summerdude]

"I met Thursday. I was -- her. The day we all traded bodies."

[kadewest]

"Fascinating," Kade says. "Spiders have exoskeletons?" He'd never really thought about it.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Did you try telling him what to do?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad's arms tighten around Magnus protectively. "What did it feel like?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Although they appear soft-bodied, spiders have a hard, protective outer layer made of overlapping layers of chitin and protein," promptly.

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji still can't remember, as if the memories of seeing Magnus that day are accessible only through a haze of smoke, but it doesn't matter. For the time being, he abandons his task, turns where he is sitting, and sets a hand at Magnus' shoulder, heavy enough that he'll be certain to feel his presence.

[summerdude]

Magnus shrugs. "I dunno. I think it was maybe fine at the time?" He can't reach the back of his neck to scratch it like this.

[onthewillowsthere]

"You're itching."

[lightbearinglord]

"Her name," Lan Wangji says, and slides his hand to the back of Magnus' neck, remembering what Claudius wrote. "You felt it that day. That's how we know."

[summerdude]

"Yeah," says Magnus, blinking. "Yeah, that's right. You warned me about her, too."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you remember her because you're dead?"

[lightbearinglord]

"Did I?" He remembers warning Magnus about Luo Binghe, not for the first time, but of course nothing about Aornis.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Naturally," with the ghost of a smile.

[onthewillowsthere]

"He listened well?"