[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 sighs, her smirk fading. "No. Fucking hated it."

[onthewillowsthere]

"What was she like?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon makes a face. "She was from the future, like yours, but not as far. Huge cop energy. Like, she basically was a cop. And, like, you know how our version's brainwashed, and has to, like, keep her adrenaline up and stuff to stay clear-headed?"

[onthewillowsthere]

He knows about cop energy from Magnus, but-- "I know she has brain damage."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon nods. "It's, like, on-going. Puts her in this happy go lucky daze where she can't take anything seriously and starts thinking hotness is the end all be all of being a good person." She shakes her head. "Her Evil Twin had it way worse. It was like she could never stop being angry and superior, and the instant she thought normal people might be, like, worthy of basic respect she'd hurt herself to make herself stop. She, uh. She called it being icy."

[onthewillowsthere]

A self-flagellation. Galahad has only scourged once, but some of the nuns did it daily. "And she hurt you."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah," says Gideon. "At first just because I was carrying a weapon, and, you know, cop. But then also I made her mad on purpose. I thought I could--I don't know. I was trying to make her think, so when she got back to her dimension, maybe--" she shrugs.

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. "I tried to make Evil Twin Magnus care too. It didn't work."

[ninth_cavalier]

"I think this might've worked. Maybe?" Gideon rubs the back of her neck. "It's, um. We're kissing. Sometimes. Normal Tally and I. Evil Twin Tally didn't like that."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Is she your girlfriend?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Dunno. We haven't talked about it." They haven't talked at all since Evil Twin day, but they hadn't touched on the girlfriend thing before that, either, except to establish that Tally gets jealous, and it's cute.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you love her?" curiously. "Or do you just want to kiss her?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Damn. Sometimes Galahad's very straightforward curiosity got teeth. "Somewhere, uh, between the two? At first I thought she was just kissing me to stay bubbly—like, to make herself clear-headed, because adrenaline helps. But—I think she actually like, likes me. And I like her. But it's, uh, it's pretty—we're playing it by ear. We've both got—stuff to work through."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Harrow?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon ticks on her fingers. "Harrow, brain damage, her friend Shay, whether or not she's mad at me for how I acted with her Evil Twin, whether or not she wants to do more than kiss, whether or not I'm dead, stopping more people from getting murdered, maybe finding a way out, whether either of us want to find a way out, what happens to everyone else if we find a way out--" She runs out of fingers.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Are you dead?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, you know, because of the attempted martyrdom thing."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods; that makes sense. "Lan Wangji and Claudius know who murdered Shen Yuan, and they're going to kill her," calmly.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, shit," says Gideon. "I heard we had a name, but I didn't know we were progressing to the counter-murder stage." She shakes her head. "This place is so distracting."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Claudius has been collecting information. He knows who she is."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Good," says Gideon with satisfaction. Claudius is a guy who gets stuff done, but still, she should check in with Lan Wangji about all that, in case she can help. She rolls her shoulders. "You still want to spar? We don't have to."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I want to." He touches the sword at his hip. She'll be disappointed, he thinks, by how unskilled he is now, but he's still willing to go.

[ninth_cavalier]

Well, Gideon's not gonna ask twice. She takes two large steps back from him, draws her blade, and gives him the duelist's salute.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad bows, as he and Lan Wangji bow to one another, and draws his sword.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon comes at him like she usually does when feeling out a new opponent: big, wide swings to see what they do, though this time compensating for Galahad's (slightly-enriched) noodle arms by not using her full strength.