[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]

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.

[onthewillowsthere]

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

[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."

[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]

"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?"

[ninth_cavalier]

"Not as much as she wanted to," says Gideon with a little smirk.