"...I am a detective."

She says it with a shrug. As if that explains everything all by itself. As if it was all she could or even needed to say to solve this case. 

She has, for the moment, discarded the remains of her armor. And with it, her skirts and colors. She is clad now only in white: a clinging tank top and simple tights. And, absent all of her carefully designed pageantry and costuming the obvious temptation would be to call her diminished. But if anything it is the opposite: now it's possible to see how broad her shoulders really are, how thick her calves, the degree to which her body is a thing of effort, cut and scarred and built until it could withstand the things she thought were necessary for her work. The armor had been a mask, yet another disguise trying to make her seem like a small thing trying to look large. 

"I seek only the truth. That is to say, the nuances of the healing arts are lost on me. It is unhelpful to know, and if I learned anything I would bend my will toward forgetting it as quickly as possible. I feel similarly in regards to combat arts, to magic writ large, to sewing, even to deduction itself. To study anything with granularity is to lose sight of its purest form. I do not know a single spell or sword form. I wield only raw Light. I apply only raw force. If I knew the true colors of anything I would never be able to respond to anything! It would take me so long to be certain I had the right tool that I would lose my window every single time. I wouldn't dare take that risk."

It is also possible to see the many ways in which she is falling apart. With no support, her leg twitches violently every time she puts weight on it in payment for her duel with Timtam. Rather than resting it, she has continued performing heroics and acrobatics until it's started to give the impression that it would rather twist around backwards and dump her on the floor than put up with her bullshit any longer. Her back too is bending, and for all she tries to play it off as simply leaning on the handle of her Heartbroom anybody who has been with her for longer than fifteen minutes could realize she would always stand straight in this sort of situation. She simply cannot manage it anymore. 

In fact, she really ought to at least sit down. Mayzie won't even let her help with the sorting, so what good is it doing her to stand like this? Except that, if she left her feet in this condition, how would she ever regain them? The case has needs. That was the point of sculpting herself in the first place. 

Eclair turns her neck and looks out over the Stacks for herself. Her broom has dusted a great many treasures both ancient and modern since she took to trying to sweep this place up. All manner of weapons, armor, mystical relics that do who-knows-what, and a plethora of tools so marvelous their like will never be seen again are all nothing but a heap of golden dust, swept into a little sack she's keeping on the floor between her feet and guarding like a dragon. All of it consigned as worthless trash. A mess.

She sighs. 

"That is why I cannot demean those who walk the paths that I refuse. As you say, did leaving decisions to the magic even work? Any simpleton can cut a knot or locate a fulcrum. A child barely old enough to walk could trip someone, and her parents would call that a magic trick. Do you understand what I am saying? I am a passing storm, best experienced for an hour or two before the wind carries me over the horizon. For all my light and thunder, what do I leave behind but vaguely dazed memories? Everyone who lives with me someday decides they would be better off if I kept moving, and they did not. [i]That[/i] is why they call me the Violet Flash."

The one thing that has invariably resisted her attempts at cleaning it have been the random, awkward elixirs and overly specific healing salves. Every tincture, every wand, every hourglass or scale or pestle made to cure exactly one thing for exactly one animal or type of person is simply sitting in a big sortable heap, having outlives even the tables and the shelves they'd been sitting in after Eclair had brushed them into oblivion. These, at least, were treasures. 

"I think... it would be a genius indeed who could cast HEAL in the first place. To hold in one's hand pure white and understand that what she wielded was not one simple color, but the violent and unpredictable rainbow itself? And from that impossible puzzle to pluck exactly the threads that would grant relief to the needy, and in the way that they needed it?

"Yes. I would call that mastery. And I would say that it had been worth any amount of effort that it took to give it to the world."

Her shirt is white. On her back, it crawls with colors she did not put there. But she cannot hide anything anymore.