onthewillowsthere | [open post -- winged and once-winged insects]

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]

Current Mood: curious

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

From:

onthewillowsthere

He nods, and reaches into the basket to find the mouse. Once he has it he places it on the floor and begins drawing it along by the head, wiggling the little cloth body as he does.

From:

quote_gentle_unquote

Regina watches avidly, then makes a chirpy sort of chatter noise. She shifts her posture, slowly, casually, stretching out on her haunches, tail starting to lash back and forth as she tracks the movement of the mouse.

Then she leaps at it.

From:

onthewillowsthere

Galahad gives it a little half-slide half-toss across the room as she does.

From:

quote_gentle_unquote

Regina's paws skitter as she adjusts her telemetry, and then she's catching the mouse with one claw and growling as she kills it dead.

From:

onthewillowsthere

As he watches, a smile pulls at the corners of his thin mouth. He glances up at Susan.

From:

quote_gentle_unquote

Susan smiles back at him. "She's quite fierce, isn't she?" she asks, proudly.

From:

onthewillowsthere

"She's a good hunter."

From:

quote_gentle_unquote

Regina, who has snapped the neck of the little cloth mouse, comes trotting over with her tail held high, meowing around the toy in her mouth, and then drops the mouse at Galahad's knee.

"Oh, well done, fierce girl."

From:

onthewillowsthere

"Well done," Galahad says as well, scratching her chin again to reward her. There's a good chance he will just sit here and play this game with her until she gets bored.

From:

quote_gentle_unquote

Regina is thrilled. She loves to hunt (toys and the occasional bug) and here's a person directing their full attention her way! She'll kill the cloth mouse four and a half more times, and then abandon it, stride her way onto Galahad's lap like he's so much furniture, and then curl up there, purring.

From:

onthewillowsthere

When she curls up, Galahad can't help looking to Susan in rapture (an expression not significantly different from any of his other expressions). He pets Regina's body with long slow strokes of his hand, all but holding his breath.

From:

quote_gentle_unquote

Susan is starting to be able to divine Galahad's expressions, given the time they've spent together with their projects and her own year of largely-expressionless existence. "I can bring her whenever I come listen to music, if you like," she offers.

From:

onthewillowsthere

"Yes. Please."

From:

quote_gentle_unquote

Regina stands up, shuffles on her feet for a moment until she's rotated 35 degrees, and then curls up again, purring even louder. She licks Galahad's fingers.

From:

onthewillowsthere

When Galahad was a child in the nunnery, as he's said, he used to pray for a kitten. What he didn't say is that he remembers exactly what it like, lying awake in his cot at the nunnery, shivering under his thin blanket (he was already prone to getting easily chilled), asking silently Please let the kitten find me. Please. He could imagine the sound of its tiny meows, how he would jump up from his cot and find a white kitten, no bigger than a roll, as lonely and cold as he was. He imagined scooping it up in his arms, and the heat of its body warming all the cold out of his hands. He would hold it to his heart and feel it purring.

That never happened. But now Regina is curled up on his lap, her raspy tongue licking his fingers, and he feels warm all the way through.

From:

quote_gentle_unquote

"Don't the two of you make a lovely picture," Susan murmurs, softly so as not to disturb either of them.

From:

onthewillowsthere

He looks up at Susan and smiles. "She's wonderful."

From:

quote_gentle_unquote

"She's being rather sweet for you," says Susan, fond, as Regina settles her head back down again, eyes squeezing closed. "How is your griffin doing, by-the-by?"