What to do? What option presents itself as the obviously correct one?

Step one. Claw at face. Intense glare at little idiot playing the Great Game in the face of A Moment. Lift arms to either side, mouth hanging open. Intention: What? What? Literally [i]what?[/i] 

Step two. Sigh and hang head. Contrition? Admonition? Headache? Ignore interloper, walk forward, pick notebook back off of ground. Smooth cover with fingers, soft. Delicate. Tender. Open to desired page, return to interloper.

Step three. Sweep leg. Catch back of head, hold steady, sweep low and lean forward until hair brushes against ground. Until face to face. Eye to eye. Breath to breath. Lips so close they taste heat. Hold. Hold. Hold.

Step four. Place open notebook in inter-- in Ruthmoreness' hands. Use now free hand to caress her face. Same technique as used on notebook earlier. Wait for eye to flutter shut in anticipation.

Step five. Flick that little idiot right where she's expecting a kiss. Once, twice, thrice. Pointer finger with the sharpness of a rapier. Pull flinching figure close against shoulder, hold face against neck, lean close. Plant kiss like candlelight on top of head.

Eclair's expression is extra intense as she, well, not [i]releases[/i] Ruthmoreness, but opens her hold on her enough to slide her grip down to the other maid's wrist and pull her fingers to the pages of the notebook. Just at the beginning of her notes on Timtam. She takes Ruthmoreness' own finger and slides it over the words, carefully as can be, forcing through tactile awareness the gaze of the beautiful klutz toward the words, so that she can see for herself what Eclair is up to and why she is in the state that she is. 

Understand. Understand. Please just, understand. She cannot ask the way that you are looking for. She cannot converse as an equal. So raise yourself, or lower, however it is you see it, to her level and... and Understand.

The rain is moving closer, now. The smell of petrichor is so strong she can't focus on anything else. The first few drops are falling on the pair of them, cool and beautiful and just ahead of an absolute wall of water to come. Without meaning to at all and even though it is an utterly inappropriate gesture for her own plans, Eclair finds herself smiling.

Step six, then. Sweep the leg again. Knock Ruthmoreness to the ground and pin her there, legs clamped over waist. Hands placed firmly to either side of her head. Lick lips.

The rain falls in earnest, now. A modest drizzle becomes a heavy downpour, and Eclair's short cropped and carefully swooped hair soaks through and hangs messily across her eyes. The shade of violet she claims her title from shines differently when it's this wet, no longer signaling a sort of perfection to challenge the Outside with but rather defined by a, for lack of a better word, allure. A silent, dripping prayer for someone to run a hand through it and feel the tangles smooth under the warmth of a shaky caress. 

Her uniform drenches as thoroughly as the rest of her, until the white is merely a suggestion and the black only exists to highlight the degree to which Aurora armor plating is mythically form fitting. It is second skin, projecting strength upon on the maidens of the Manor while reveling in the unique beauty of their every curve and little strangeness of their bodies. 

Many things can be said about Eclair Espoir, but sopping wet like this there are very few that aren't about beauty. Her willowy frame and delicate little curves are perfect for keeping the woman trapped beneath her safe from the storm without smothering her. Ruthmoreness is free to watch the knight grow wetter and (impossibly, but still) wetter for her sake, to watch more and more of the body above her be revealed to her, and still to take her own breaths. To smell the rain and exist in this tiny pocket of warmth created by an act of love.

And, if she would just pull her ditzy little head out of the clouds, to [i]read[/i].