[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]

"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.

[onthewillowsthere]

He fights in a way that makes it clear who his teacher is -- controlled, disciplined, though he has none of Lan Wangji's grace. He's not as strong as Gideon, but he has determination, and he's unerringly fair and straightforward; he never does anything unexpected, as if he's used to sheer power being enough.

[ninth_cavalier]

That certainty—that he doesn't need to be unexpected—actually reminds Gideon of Lancelot, though she's probably not going to tell Galahad that. (She might tell Lancelot, though). It's nice—she'd expected, from the way he'd been talking about it, for him to be unsure in his new way of fighting, but instead they trade easy, enjoyable blows for a while before Gideon sweeps out a leg to trip him.

[onthewillowsthere]

As with Lancelot, this works perfectly, and Galahad goes down in the grass with a thump. He looks up at her, startled, and slowly smiles.

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon grins down at him. "And here you made it sounds like you can't even swing a blade," she says. "Not bad." She offers him a hand up.

[onthewillowsthere]

He takes it. "I would have disarmed you before."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Yep," says Gideon, cheerfully, not doubting it, and levers him up to his feet—and then over his feet, shifting her weight and picking him up bodily to sling him across her shoulders in a fireman's carry with a semi-exaggerated kind of joyful grunt. Keeping an eye on his sword arm in case he gets any ideas, she spins around with him, once, then staggers to a halt. "Okay, you're heavier than you look. This is what I get for skipping leg day."

[onthewillowsthere]

It takes him a moment to process what's happening -- the sudden lift from the ground, the seconds of weightlessness, and then the dizzying spin -- but then he realizes: she's playing. Swordfighting is play to her, and this is an extension of that play. She's like Drosera carrying around a plant pot she's killed.

Solemnly, "It is the weight of my great purpose."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon cackles and sets him down. "Of course it is. You wanna try again, see if you can go for the disarm without divine cheating?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"Yes. Show me how to do regular cheating."

[ninth_cavalier]

"Fuck yeah," says Gideon, but she doesn't take her position again yet. "There are 27 bones in the human hand. Easiest disarm is just to break, like, pretty much any of 'em, but especially the carpals or metacarpals."

[onthewillowsthere]

"How do you do that?" He doesn't think it's as easy as just being strong.

[ninth_cavalier]

"If you're strong enough, you might be able to break someone's carpals just hitting their blade, but it would take a lot for you to get there," says Gideon. "So your other options are smashing 'em directly, with the flat of the blade or the pommel, or—" She smirks. "You knock 'em down, like I did you, and then you stomp."

[onthewillowsthere]

He lifts his sword and turns it backwards, slowly bringing the pommel down like a pestle crushing into a mortar, and gives her a this? look.

[ninth_cavalier]

"Kind of," says Gideon. "Here, take defensive stance for a sec, I'll show you what I mean. Without actually doing it, obviously, no need to call Magnus today."

[onthewillowsthere]

He does immediately (his form is perfect).

[ninth_cavalier]

"Option one, if you're fast." Gideon aims a blow at his blade, high left arcing downward, but swaps to one-handed at the last second, twirling her blade in an arc beyond her own shoulder and bringing the pommel around, slowing as she does so, so it bumps against the back of his hand.

She steps back again. "Option two, if you're nasty." She aims the same blow, but this time catching his blade and staying caught, steel sliding against steel until they're crossguard to crossguard, and then she twists, so that Galahad's hand is pinched between his grip and her pommel.

She steps back again. "You can also aim for elbows. Trochlea's thicker, harder to break, but it's easier to hit the nerve, make the hand numb."

[onthewillowsthere]

Her knowledge of the bones and how to break them fascinates them -- it reminds him of Claudius, who uses his hands to heal but can use them to hurt, too; who knows all the parts of the body. He doesn't want Gideon to open and examine him the way he fantasizes about Claudius doing, but he wants to learn the things she knows, to understand the scaffolding and skeleton of the house of his body better.

"Show me how to do that. You can hurt me."

[ninth_cavalier]

Gideon studies him for a minute, then shrugs. She won't insult him by asking if he's sure, and anyway, it's not like she'll hurt him that bad. She does this right, he'll feel it from his collarbone to the tips of his fingers—but not in a way that lasts too long. That's why she recommended breaking bones first. A good disarm, you really hope they can't pick the sword back up again.

She rocks back on her heels, throws herself forward as if attacking, and then side-steps and twists, slamming the flat of her blade against the medial epicondyle of Galahad's bent arm, just above the point of his elbow, where the ulnar nerve is closes to the skin. She pulls it a little—again, not trying to break bone—but not a lot.