[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]

"Did you try telling him what to do?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Naturally," with the ghost of a smile.

[onthewillowsthere]

"He listened well?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, well enough, I suppose."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Claudius likes that too," he tells her.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Grantaire's listening?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. He says Grantaire is good at it."

[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?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Gideon. Or Tress."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

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

[onthewillowsthere]

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

[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?"

[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.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Even though she doesn't share any measure of Galahad's affection for the boy, Susan is aware that Galahad and Magnus are profoundly close. "How dreadful," she says. Her assessing mind is already turning this over and over, but instead of charging directly into incisive questions on the subject, she glances at Galahad, thinks of how she might approach a similar conversation with Lancelot, and instead asks, "Would you like to unpack what was wrong about him?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"No," Galahad says. He's talked about Evil Twin Magnus with Claudius and Lan Wangji and Magnus himself; he knows what was wrong about him, even if he struggles to say it. He appreciates that she asked, though, which he hopes she can tell -- and after a moment's thought, he just says so. "Thank you for asking."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Very well, then, she shall set her questions aside. "Of course," she says, and then offers: "I believe the most unsettling change I encountered was Laertes."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Why?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"He was..." she purses her lips. "Slippery. A curious mix of forthright, incautious, and tremendously protective."

[onthewillowsthere]

"You didn't like it."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"It was an adjustment," she says, diplomatically.

[onthewillowsthere]

"I think it's better if you like Laertes the way he is. Since he's here."