* [closed post]

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan cherishes her time in the lab with Galahad. She likes the care he takes, his attention to detail. It's lovely to know that they can work equally well in parallel, side-by-side with complimentary tasks, quiet and totally focused on their individual projects, and in collaboration. When they do speak, he's delightfully precise with his words and direct with his questions in a way that is, in turn, novel and refreshing. They've made great headway with their work, and now that the Mansion has settled into winter and there are fewer arthropods to easily discover and inventory, outside of the soil samples they continue to take and investigate under the microscope, they can settle into cataloguing and categorizing their notes from the spring, summer, and autumn. Sometimes Constance is present, too, and that's also lovely: they all get along well, and there's something ever so settling about three heads bent carefully over scientific pursuits. Typically, when Constance is there, Susan and Galahad work independently so as not to distract her, but sometimes the three of them break for tea and a brief chat. Outside of sex and archery practice, it's really one of the highlights of Susan's days.

Today's stint in the lab has been varied: Constance is elsewhere, and Susan and Galahad started with a discussion about adapting Earth-based classification systems to accommodate otherworldly species (this is a conversation that they have weekly, at the very least), and then fell into separate projects - Galahad has been drawing insects not captured in any books in the library to create a scientific field guide for their local environs, and Susan has been counting microscopic organisms in winter soil samples to compare with the measurements Lan Zhan took on the day Lan Wangji was switched out. But there's also something pressing on her conscience: the year is slipping more rapidly toward Dark, and she's been procrastinating on an essential task out of reluctance to speak to Magnus. It's high time she regain momentum.

She pushes back from the microscope, makes a careful note of the current tally of living organisms, and turns to Galahad. "When you've got a moment," she says, "I should like to show you something." Cognizant of the fact that he gets easily chilled, and to provide him with an out should he require one, she clarifies, "Outside."

Comments

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad begins every morning by preparing breakfast for Claudius and then going to training with Lan Wangji. The routine makes him feel settled. In truth, before their marriage, he hadn't been able to imagine that his mornings wouldn't always follow the same pattern: awakening at Matins and then lying in bed for long, suffocating minutes, sometimes as long as an hour, crushed under the weight of despair.

There are mornings he still feels it -- when he wakes, his body is leaden, and the world seems to hold no joy, especially as the days grow shorter and colder -- but now he has a reason to get up. Claudius needs to eat and have real coffee. After that, his lessons must continue. Every day he becomes stronger, more capable. He feels his qi moving within him, vitality and a purpose he's chosen for himself.

The rest of his days are his to order, and there is always a great deal to do, but he especially loves working in the laboratory with Susan and Constance. They're both straightforward and honest, easy to understand. They care about the things he cares about, even if the precise details are different. He trusts them.

He looks up when Susan speaks, and nods. He will need to get his coat first, and: "I want to finish this. It will take--" His gaze flicks to his watch. "Seven more minutes."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Yes, of course," says Susan; that gives her ample time to tidy her space, and she starts to do so: slotting the slides back into their storage-boxes, wiping down the microscope, filing away her notes, and initiating the preparations for tomorrow's work.

[onthewillowsthere]

His measurement proves precise. Nearly seven minutes later he puts down his charcoal pencil. "I need to get my coat. I can come back here, or you may come with me if you'd like."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I ought to get my coat as well. We might meet by the front door? Unless you'd like to come visit with Regina for a minute or two on our way out."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad always wants to visit with Regina. "I'll come to your room."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Let's fetch your coat first, then," says Susan, going to the door and holding it open for him.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Thank you." He closes his sketchbook and slips it into his messenger bag before going out into the hall. He's never going to be truly graceful, but his training with Lan Wangji has made his movements smoother and more fluid, less like a jerky puppet.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan lets him lead the way to his rooms, even though she knows the way quite well. And while silences are comfortable with Galahad, she has been trying to keep abreast of his internal calendar as much as her own, ever since the Mansion thought to try and celebrate her birthday. "It ought to be very nearly Easter by your reckoning, hadn't it?" she asks.

[onthewillowsthere]

"Four days," Galahad answers promptly. "It's Holy Week."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I find the year's mismatch so queer," she says. "An autumnal Christmas, a midwinter Easter... Though one does wonder if that's how Australians feel."

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad knows about Australia from reading voraciously, and he nods. "It is disorienting."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan would expect no less. Galahad is remarkably well-read. They're at his and Claudius's room, and she waits whilst he fetches his coat before saying, "I do wonder, occasionally, what the balance ought to be between how things were at home and how things are now. Especially since we're all of us from different points in different years."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Explain."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

As they start off toward her own rooms, Susan says, "Ought we map things onto the calendar here and hold to it, so we've got regular anchor points in the year besides, I suppose, Dark and Rainbows, or ought we hold to the calendars from home? For me, it feels as if it ought to be October, rather than practically Eastertide."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I believe it makes more sense to use the calendar here, because we all share it. The other way presumes your and my calendars are the same, but we aren't even from the same year."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I agree. The question then becomes what sort of milestones we ought to recognize each year."

[onthewillowsthere]

"Is that why you wanted to commemorate Wanderers Gather?"

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"One of the reasons, yes." They're at her room now, and she opens the door and kneels to greet Regina, who has quite a lot to say about her morning and the matter of her abandonment throughout. She gestures Galahad to greet Regina, too, if he should like, and adds, "It's nice, I think, to have a celebration that can be meaningful for people from different worlds and different traditions, don't you think? But also I do still rather want a much more - robust calendar of social events open to--" Not all. "--Most residents, so that people grow comfortable with being able to choose which they should most like to attend, and still have the opportunity to find new joys."

(She does, it must be said, think very little of Enjolras for failing to continue his silly little salons. It isn't very surprising - she's not had a single interaction with him that disabuses her of the notion that he's terrible at details and follow-through - but it is dreadfully annoying that he had such potential on his hands and failed to nurture it into something foundational.)

[onthewillowsthere]

Galahad, as usual, drops onto one knee to offer his hands to Regina before reaching into his messenger bag for a stem of dried catnip Claudius prepared for him, its leaves paper-thin and brittle.

"Have you spoken to Claudius? It would make him happy to be consulted. And he would have ideas."

[quote_gentle_unquote]

Susan watches as Regina shoves her wet little nose against Galahad's hand fondly. "Ages ago, but we've not touched base on this recently. I shall bring it up again next time we speak."

[onthewillowsthere]

"I will also consider it. Most of the holidays I know are feasts and fasts." But Percival had pagan holidays, Welsh superstitions. The idea of preserving some part of him in the calendar is appealing.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"I believe it would be eminently reasonable to have more feasts than just Wanderer's Gather. What ratio do you suppose would be ideal, considering holidays from our respective homes and ones we invent here out of whole cloth?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"No more than one a month, unless they're to be celebrated privately, or else I think it will become burdensome to keep them," he says, thinking of how Laertes had become wrung out, tea leaves used for too many cups of tea.

[quote_gentle_unquote]

"Oh, certainly not," says Susan, firmly. "I meant - when we do have events, what proportion ought to be based off traditions we come from, and what proportion ought to be new ones we've established here?"

[onthewillowsthere]

"That may call for a survey," not sounding at all sorry -- and perhaps he and Susan have spent enough time together that she, like Magnus and Claudius, can pick out the subtleties in his flat voice. "Which holidays have the most importance to people."