[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]

"It would be hard to know that you hurt someone while you weren't yourself."

[mothwingofriverclan]

"Yes. Ashfur caused a lot of harm, not only to Squirrelflight, but to all the clans. As Bramblestar, he exiled anyone who had broken the warrior code, even if what they had done was years ago. He had cut off everyone's access to StarClan, and acted like the loss of contact was because we weren't following the code closely enough. It was about power, more than anything else. He convinced several other clans to do it, too. Even mine. I was banished because my parents weren't in the same clan."

[onthewillowsthere]

So he hadn't just hurt his mate. The things he did hurt everyone. "Were you allowed back into the Clan after?"

[mothwingofriverclan]

"Yes. Though, really, it was up to me whether I gave the Clan my trust again. I almost didn't go back, since my leader, Mistystar, hadn't been possessed. She was just convinced to be cruel by the impostor, and too easily, in my opinion. That's much worse than poor Bramblestar, whose body was just used without his permission. Mistystar went along with him knowingly."

[onthewillowsthere]

"That is worse," Galahad agrees quietly.

[mothwingofriverclan]

"I didn't want to leave them without a medicine cat, and now they only have poor Frostpaw."

[onthewillowsthere]

A part of Galahad would like to tell her that Frostpaw is probably fine -- she's a good teacher, she'll have given Frostpaw enough -- but that would be a lie. He has no idea. So instead he stays quiet with her, so that she isn't worrying about RiverClan alone. He knows too, and he can share the worry.

[mothwingofriverclan]

"So, you know. I have to make sure you're fully trained up."

[onthewillowsthere]

"May I have a lesson today?"

[mothwingofriverclan]

"Aren't you busy?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"I can stop." Being Magnus' best friend has made Galahad significantly better at task-switching than he used to be. Of course part of him would like to continue doing what he has already planned to spend the afternoon doing, but it feels possible, for Mothwing, to choose something else.

[mothwingofriverclan]

"Finish what you were doing, and then maybe we can do something simple." Mothwing's not sure she's up to a long lesson today, but she can't deny Galahad what he wants, not when he's been such a patient listener.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you want to see?"

[mothwingofriverclan]

"Sure. This is your biota project, right?" Mothwing turns so that she can see onto the table. "Susan told me a little about it."

[onthewillowsthere]

"What did she tell you?" curiously.

[mothwingofriverclan]

"That you're studying all the living things in the garden to help grow some twoleg food. I think it goes very well with medicine cat training," she says approvingly.

[onthewillowsthere]

"There are invertebrates here from all of our worlds, we think. More kinds than there should be in one environment. We're cataloging as many as we can."

[mothwingofriverclan]

"Invertebrates? What does that mean?"

[onthewillowsthere]

Rather than launch into a definition, as he did for Kade, Galahad considers what a cat would know about invertebrates -- what it would mean to Mothwing. He imagines doing his research the same size as her, the carabid beetle under the microscope as big as a saltshaker.

"They're insects, like beetles and flies, and also spiders and crabs and millipedes and mites."

[mothwingofriverclan]

"So... not true prey, but also not plants, or larger animals. I'm afraid all I know about that is how to get rid of fleas and ticks."

[onthewillowsthere]

"How?"

[mothwingofriverclan]

"Using moss soaked in mouse bile. At home it's a chore for apprentices to get the ticks off the elders. They always complain." Mothwing mrrows a little laugh. "I'm sure I did, too, when I was a warrior apprentice."

[onthewillowsthere]

"When you have ticks, I will take them off for you," Galahad says, with utmost sincerity.

[mothwingofriverclan]

"Thank you, Galahad. I'm sure those twoleg paws will be a great help. I haven't gotten any yet, though, since I'm not quite at the age where I need to retire and lie around in the elder's den all day." Mothwing's sure she'll never retire, actually, but she likes threatening to. "You could add the ticks to your collection, though I'm not sure they're helpful to anything but themselves."

[onthewillowsthere]

"They are a source of food for ground birds like turkeys and grouse. They take nourishment from larger host animals high in the food change and transfer it down to lower organisms," he recites dutifully.