[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

[onthewillowsthere]

He knows gross from Magnus. "I like the hermit crab metaphor better."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose I've not spoken to him enough to notice whether there was a difference."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Claudius also calls him biddable."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I imagine a number of people do," she says, tapping the end of her pen against the notebook. "I suppose he hadn't any obvious physical changes, so there's disconfirmatory evidence for that theory."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Was there anyone besides him who didn't look different?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose Laertes looked mostly, but not entirely, similar, but I'm afraid I didn't meet enough people to do a thorough census." She purses her lips. "I wonder if there's anyone else we might ask?"

[lightbearinglord]

Lan Wangji frowns, just barely, but when he thinks of Claudius, for whom information can be powerful and dangerous at once, who tried with a smile to step neatly past the story of how Luo Binghe deceived him into a kiss, he's not so surprised. He can understand that desire to shield Galahad from everything, wrapping him in protective safety. "We know better now." The more people who know of Aornis and the more people who trust each other with it, the less power she can wield.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Gideon. Or Tress."

[summerdude]

"Yeah," says Magnus. Since his hand is free now, he scratches the back of his neck again.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"We ought to ask both. That shall give us a broader spread of data points."

[kadewest]

"Too many legs. I'm a squeamish man, Galahad."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods, and hesitates. "Is there anyone you were sorry you met?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad blinks. "Why does that bother you?" The legs and their number are not something that he thinks about very much.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon sighs, shaking her head, comically dramatic. "If you can't accept me at my sex spider, you don't deserve me at my hermit crab metaphor."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad eyes her. "Is that a meme?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"A meme?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"A meme is a joke, usually an image or a repeated phrase, that spreads around a community. It takes on meaning and becomes a shortcut for conveying emotions when you don't want to have to spell it out. The emotion isn't always obvious to people who haven't seen the meme before." He pauses, and adds, "They can also be iterative."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Huh. Then—yeah, it's a meme." She knocks their shoulders together. "Not saying you actually don't deserve me."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad smiles slightly and knocks back against her. "Yes. Because it's a joke."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan considers the question seriously. "From what I've heard, I think some other people might have been sorry to meet the alternate... me," she says. "I believe some exchanges were more difficult than others to make sense of and reconcile." And frankly, if she had known Lancelot was going to be swapped, she wouldn't have put forth as much effort as she did to get to know the alternate versions of his friends and lovers. "But I don't believe I'd call myself truly sorry to have met them." She sets her pen down on her notebook and twists to look at Galahad straight on. "Did you?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Exactly." Gideon is, like, weirdly relieved—she hates the social stumbling-around she's always doing around here, like everyone has this whole web of relationships and if she steps wrong or likes the wrong person it's gonna get her all tangled up in shit. Hey, that's another reason for the spider metaphor. But Galahad's not mad at her for not reacting right to his explanation about Sagramore, and if he wanted anything from her about it she's pretty sure he would just tell her. She slings an arm around his shoulder and messes up his hair a little, not quite managing to swallow the hiss as it accidentally stretches the wounds in her side.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Magnus's Evil Twin was--" He fumbles for words to describe the wrongness of him, the lonely realization that Evil Twin Magnus was too removed and world-weary to care about him, or be someone capable of caring about him; that he was ready for the end of the world. That he didn't understand Galahad at all. "I didn't like him," Galahad says finally.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Are you hurt?" he asks at once.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Ah, it's not a big deal. I'm good." She hesitates. "Did you, uh, meet the other Tally, on—whatever we're calling it, alternate version day?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Evil Twin Tally. Did she hurt you?"