[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]

"He can't speak to me here. Or He doesn't."

[kadewest]

"But He gave you the vision."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad nods and falls silent, turning that over in his mind like a seed of wheat. Finally he says, "I think it might be like a letter."

[kadewest]

Kade nods. He thinks he understands Galahad a little better now--he'd been alarmed at the speed with which Galahad had positioned himself opposite a person he deemed good, and better, but his alarm has abated a little with Galahad's careful explanations.

"I'm sorry God was capricious with your friend," he says, and adds a point of clarification of his own: "I think faith might just be a little less disconnected from proof in my time. Even the most self-avowed faithful seek evidence they can share, or hold as proof."

[onthewillowsthere]

"They want to see His hand at work in the world."

[kadewest]

"Yeah, probably," Kade allows. "I get the impression a bunch of 'em want clout, too."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Clout?"

[kadewest]

"Attention. Prestige. The knowledge of the people that they were good enough to be chosen."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Why would God grant His favor to people who want it for that reason?"

[kadewest]

"Between you and me, I don't know about anyone from my time who's been granted favor by the Christian God. Just a bunch of folks who claim He does, for the power it grants them. And so on the one hand you get your Jesus toasts, and on the other hand you get a good chunk of evangelicals."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad frowns. "That would displease God. Why do people think it’s right?"

[kadewest]

"Well, for one, Christianity is... pretty different in my time. There's about a million different sects."

[onthewillowsthere]

"There are heretical sects?"

[kadewest]

"Heretical sects?" Kade laughs. "I'd love to see you call some Oklahoma Baptists that to their faces." Then he sobers. "I imagine the Protestant Reformation was after your time. There was... a fragmenting. Concerns with indulgences, that sort of thing. Led to a bunch of different approaches. And then of course there were political issues, too--kings banning one thing or another and founding new churches, stuff like that. Catholicism is still doing numbers worldwide, but it's smaller in the country I grew up in. There's about twice as many people from other denominations." He folds his hands together, resting them over his belly. "I guess you could say it's all under the same umbrella, but some see that umbrella as a parasol, and some see it as a big old beach affair. And they hold it in different ways."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Are there books about it?"

[kadewest]

Kade laughs. "Yeah, I'd imagine so. Probably hundreds of 'em here, at least. There's definitely thousands back home."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you." He knows what he's going to be reading about for a while.

[kadewest]

"No problem." Kade tilts his head. "Earth history isn't my strongest suit, but I'd be happy to talk through whatever you end up digging up, if you want."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you."

[kadewest]

"No problem," Kade says, and then amends, "You'd be doing me a favor, actually. It would scratch that missing-school itch I get sometimes."

[onthewillowsthere]

"What do you mean?"

[kadewest]

"The way I figure it," says Kade, "talking through the differences in some system--like religion--between different centuries is analogous to talking through the differences in some system between different Worlds."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Do you like categorizing things?" he asks curiously.

[kadewest]

"Oh, sure. Mostly Worlds, so I can get a sense of the kind of things a student will need to help... acclimate."

[onthewillowsthere]

He nods. This makes sense. "When you're here, does it feel like we're students?"