[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

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon reaches out to squeeze his bicep. "Ah, we'll get you there. What's Lan Wangji got you doing? Push-ups?"

[onthewillowsthere]

There's definitely muscle there where there wasn't before! "Lifting rocks."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon laughs. "Yeah, that'll do it. Practical, too, depending on where you put 'em down." She lets herself out of the bug laboratory, absently holding the door for Galahad, too. "I've been teaching Tally self-defense, if you ever wanna switch it up and join us."

[onthewillowsthere]

He ducks through and follows. He'd offered to spar with Gideon because he knows she likes it, and it feels like a Friend Activity, but it's still not something he really enjoys. On the other hand, he hasn't seen Tally since she braided his hair while he was in Tress' body, and he wonders how she is. Claudius said he taught her to do laundry while he was medicated.

"Maybe," he says. "When?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon shrugs. "Most, like, late mornings." Probably. Her schedule is a little out of whack right now, and she's not really sure how things will change once she and Tally are officially sharing their rooms. "No pressure, obviously. Just might be a more fair fight than me 'n you."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Okay. Thank you. Do you still train with Lancelot?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah." Gideon's smiling a little. "Keeps me on my toes."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Is there anyone else?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Who I spar with? Gu Xiang. Lan Wangji, once." She should—probably talk to him, after the conversation she'd had with the version of him from space. "Janet taught me some axe shit. Why?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I wondered. Not with Laertes?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, uh, no. I don't think Laertes likes me much."

[onthewillowsthere]

Thinking back on his own difficulties with Laertes, Galahad says, "It's better if you have something to do together. I think he worries otherwise."

[ninth_cavalier]

It feels less like worry and more like judgment to Gideon, but she doesn't really know the guy well. "I helped him build a wall for their basement, and that went okay. But I think mostly because Sagramore was there."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I don't like Sagramore," shortly.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon blinks—that's a new one. "Oh, huh. Why not?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"He betrayed Claudius."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon's eyebrows go up. Dramatic. "Betrayed him how?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"He was Luo Binghe's lover when he knew that Luo Binghe tortured Claudius and tried to kill him," his voice gone clipped. "Claudius has forgiven him. I haven't."

[ninth_cavalier]

Oh, it's lovers-of-lovers drama. Well, the torture thing probably explains why Lan Wangji thinks Luo Binghe is so dangerous. She'll have to find out more about that—what kind of torture?—but she can tell from Galahad's tone he's not the one to ask. "Got it. Sagramore didn't mention Luo Binghe when he was walking me through the sex spider, but sounds like this was all before my time. Maybe he wasn't including past stuff."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad frowns at her, momentarily distracted from his hatred of Sagramore and Luo Binghe by... "Sex spider," he repeats.

[ninth_cavalier]

She grins at him. "Yeah. He and Laertes are the body, and then everyone they're fucking is all the little legs."

[onthewillowsthere]

He doesn't quite wrinkle his nose, but his lip tucks in a way that Magnus or Claudius would read as deep disgust and Gideon may not notice at all. "That's not how spiders work."

[ninth_cavalier]

"They don't have lots of little legs?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"They have eight. Their legs aren't people they're sleeping with."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Well, yeah, it's a metaphor. Like the hermit crab, but much, much grosser." They've made it outside, at this point.