[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

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes, for my momentary replacement."

[onthewillowsthere]

Again, he waits, to see what else she might say.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I suppose there's no way to know."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Not without asking," he agrees, with a momentary press of his lips.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"And I don't suppose we shall have the opportunity." Susan is quiet for a moment. "Perhaps it's for the best." This is said with immeasurable doubt, however - Susan likes to understand how things work.

[onthewillowsthere]

"It doesn't have to be."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

She looks up a him, blinking.

[onthewillowsthere]

"For the best. It doesn't have to be. You can be disappointed. Or angry. About not getting to know."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Galahad," says Susan, after a protracted beat where she first purses her lips as if to argue, then pauses to reconsider, then parts her mouth with surprise, and finally furrows her brow thoughtfully. "I do so appreciate you."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you. I appreciate you too."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"You've got quite a refreshing outlook," she tells him.

[onthewillowsthere]

The look he gives her is, in its subtle way, faintly bemused -- why should he pretend not to feel the things he's feeling -- but he does know why, he's loved Claudius long enough to know why.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan considers whether to make the conversation more personal, for a moment, weighing her options, and then decides that as she's committed to a friendship with Galahad and she appreciates the perspective he brings to the table, she might as well venture the information. He can politely disengage if he'd rather not delve into it. She confides, "I'm not always terrifically in touch with my emotions."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Why?" he asks -- just curious, not accusatory.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Ingrid - my friend Ingrid from home - would say that it's a classic example of repression, which is a way of protecting myself from the full brunt of reality."

[onthewillowsthere]

"If you chose not to feel anything, you wouldn't have to feel anything," he suggests.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, I oughtn't go that far." Susan is quiet for a long moment, worrying her lip between her teeth. "I didn't really, when I got here."

[onthewillowsthere]

He waits, watching her. She does so many things with her face and her hands that he would, he thinks, see greater meaning in if he were Claudius.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Have you ever chosen not to feel anything?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"When Claudius and I were apart, I felt nothing. I wanted to die and I felt nothing else. I closed myself off."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Ah," says Susan, and because Galahad is so matter-of-fact about that admission, she chooses to remain so, as well. "For months after my family died, the only thing I felt was cold, though I always did take it as rather a source of relief that I never once wished to follow them. Not with any real intent, anyway."

[onthewillowsthere]

"When Shen Yuan died, I felt like I wasn't in my body any more. Sometimes I feel that way. As if I'm just watching."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Her gaze flicks over his face. "A traumatic neurosis?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"What is that?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"They occur when there's been some sort of emotional shock and one's ego is trying to protect itself."