Title: on the hunt
Fandom: Magic Knight Rayearth
Rating: General
Length: 1000ish words
Content notes: none
Author notes: Umi and Clef
Summary: Clef’s doing a bit of… impromptu reorganising.

oOo

Umi walked into Clef’s study - or, she walked through the door, anyway, and got no further. Blinking and speechless, she stared at the lopsided, teetering piles of paper and books and - and globes and boxes of pens and who knew what else which crowded across the floor. Then she sneezed, the motion of the door closing behind her wafting the air about enough that a wave of dust embraced her.

The sneeze caught Clef’s attention, as he crouched on the floor in the far corner of the room, digging through a low cupboard set into the wall. (Umi had seen the decorations down there a hundred times but never realised they were a door handle and hinges.) He turned and blinked at her. “Umi? Blast, how late is it, if you’re here?”

“…A bit after lunch?” Umi suggested, feeling somewhat doubtful about it in the face of his frown. “What are you doing?”

His frown got deeper. “Looking for something. Sorry about all the-” he waved his hand, whether at the mess or the dust or both, Umi wasn’t sure, turning back to fumble in the back of the cupboard.

For someone who generally seemed to keep most of their important belongings in one ring, he’d certainly found a lot of stuff to strew about the place. “Did you lose something? What are you looking for?”

“If I could remember that I wouldn’t be digging through all these cupboards,” he muttered, shoving his hand right to the back and flailing it about.

“You - don’t remember what you’re looking for.” Umi tilted her head at him, and even with his head half in a cupboard, he flushed. “How does that even work?”

“I got distracted!” Pulling back, Clef turned to her, his face pink and his hair falling all over the place - he didn’t have his coronet on, which happened occasionally these days, but not all that often. “I came in here looking for something, and then I found the minutes from the last Council meeting on my desk and realised I still hadn’t dug out some of the older guild chronicles I was meant to be finding for the clerks to copy, so I went looking for them, and by the time I’d figured out which ones I needed to hand over I’d managed to forget what I came in for. But I’ll know it if I see it. …I hope.

“Did you make the mess looking for the chronicles or looking for whatever you’ve forgotten?” Umi asked, trying not to start grinning too hard. “Er. You made sure you didn’t bury the chronicles you needed in this mess, right?”

Clef looked at her, and then about the room, horror growing on his face. “I - ah.”

“…You buried them?”

Looking about, he nodded, miserable. “I can’t see them, so that would be the logical conclusion, yes. I was meant to have them to the clerks by lunchtime.”

“Right.” Umi rolled up her sleeves so she couldn’t catch the buttons decorating the cuffs on anything - the strange architecture Clef had made of all his stuff seemed too precarious to risk knocking a key piece down. “You look that side, I’ll look this side. What do these chronicles look like?”

“Thick books, about the width of your palm and the length of your forearm, and they’re bound in a deep blue. At least mostly they’re deep blue - they’re rather old, so some have faded somewhat.” He set about carefully putting things back into the cupboard he’d just emptied, rather more systematically than he’d been dragging things out of it. “…You don’t have to help me, Umi. I’m the one who lost them.”

“I know I don’t have to. I’m doing it anyway,” Umi told him, cheerful about it. “We’ll find them, and then we’ll find some lunch for you, because you haven’t eaten, have you.”

“…No.”

“And then we’ll come back and look at random things in here until you work out what you forgot.” She couldn’t put things away - she didn’t know where they went, probably couldn’t have reached it if she did. But she could stack things in better piles, so they were more stable and took up less room.

Across the room, Clef huffed something that might have been a laugh. “Since when are you the one organising people?”

“I’m good at planning!” Umi retorted, stopping her sorting to glare at him again - and also to sneeze. “It’s a good plan. Simple, effective…”

“It’s only effective if we find them,” Clef muttered, turning back to the hunt.

It took a solid half an hour, but they found the books - Umi found a small stack, and then Clef found the rest of them - despite both having to stop to sneeze enough times that Umi was almost out of tissues. They also made a path for Clef to get out from the back of the room. He paused by his desk to pick up his coronet from where it was wedged on the corner, half under a stack of paper, and then paused.

Umi, stood in the door with an armful of heavy books, eyed him hard. “Please don’t tell me that’s what you were looking for.”

“I won’t, then,” Clef said, and jammed it on his head. It didn’t quite go with the streak of dust through his hair. “I don’t think we need to go on looking this afternoon, though.”

Sighing theatrically, Umi pushed the door open and held it for him. “Are you sure you didn’t just lose a night’s sleep somewhere? You should have a nap after lunch.”

“Another of your good plans?” Clef asked, but he didn’t dispute it. “I have too much work to catch up on, now I’ve lost half a day. And I need to set my study right.”

Umi rolled her eyes, but didn’t push. After all, she was here overnight. She could always come and chase him out of his study if she needed to. It would be easy enough to tell - she’d be able to hear the sneezing down the corridor if he was reorganising it.

oOo