[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]

"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.

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad gives her a long look during which he tries to discern her expression and what it means. "Did you like fighting with her?"

[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.