[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 hesitates. "Putting it like that makes it sound more planned and holy than how desperate and stupid it actually was, but. Yeah." She rubs the back of her neck. "Tried to."

[onthewillowsthere]

"But it didn't work?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"I dunno. I showed up here instead. Maybe it did—maybe this is just a splintered-off bit of me, and the rest got absorbed into Harrow's batshit crazy little head and helped her kill Cytherea and get her and Camilla out of there. Or maybe it didn't, and they're dead." It doesn't hurt as much as it had, saying it to Tally. Maybe she's building up scar tissue. "I told the other you living in that maybe could make me go nuts."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I worry about Percival, now that I've given up the Grail," softly. His hand is still curled around her fingers. "I don't know what will happen to him. God punished him once already because of me. I'm angry when I think about it because there's nothing I can do."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon watches him for a moment. "King Galahad and I talked about him a little." She thinks. He technically hadn't said Percival's name, but she's not that dumb, she can put together clues.

[onthewillowsthere]

"What did he say?" His voice takes on the extra tonelessness it gets when he cares about something.

[ninth_cavalier]

"He loved him. They never did anything about it, but—he loved him, terribly, and—by the time he was from, Percival was dead." She says it as gently as she can. "I don't know how—I'm sorry, I should have asked, but. He probably would have said that was part of God's plan, too."

[onthewillowsthere]

"It's okay," quietly. "I wouldn't have. I still wouldn't. I just wanted him to be--"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah," says Gideon. "Well—I think he was. Until, you know."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. Then, "Are you okay?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon sighs, and consciously relaxes her shoulders. "Yeah. I think. Are you?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I am now."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Now as in, like, you weren't earlier, or because if you weren't here you wouldn't be later?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I'm okay here. I'm permitted to choose. I've become apostate. If I were him, it would be different."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon, who is herself apostate according to several thousand lower-house losers, nods. "Yeah. I told him you were like a hermit crab."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad tilts his head. "A hermit crab?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah." Gideon scratches at her jaw, a little self-conscious about the metaphor now. "Like--you trade up when the thing you are doesn't suit you anymore."

[onthewillowsthere]

A small, quick smile. "Changing, but still the same."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yeah. You're still you. And you don't let anyone stop you from becoming, like, more you." Even God, but she thinks that's probably implied.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you." He files it away to find a book on hermit crabs once he's done here, so he can learn more about them, but he already likes the comparison.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Sure," says Gideon. "I don't think he got it. But he's not into like, little creatures the way you are."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I'm into little creatures," he agrees. Then his gaze flicks up to her. "Are you still a Sword Guy?"

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon grins at him. "Big time. Why?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I'm learning to be one again. I will fight with you if you'd like."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Oh, hell yeah," says Gideon. Galahad was one of the few people Lancelot had mentioned could win against him, here, and she'd been low-key disappointed at his pacifist turn. She looks at him curiously, though, and then makes a face. "Got you shook up," she guesses. "The murder."