Submission (#3586) Approved

It was a gorgeous day outside. At least, that’s what Usachi assumed when she woke up that morning.

When the elnin finally woke up in the late morning, trying to piece together what had been a dream and what happened the night before, she watched the soft shadows of tree leaves dance in the streams of light that seeped in through the partially closed window curtains. She remembered that her friend Seval had come over since they were in town, and they chatted and played card games late into the night. A soft snore from behind her confirmed that Seval really did come over, and that they spent the night by falling asleep in a nearby mound of pillows and blankets on the floor.

Usachi did her best to be quiet when she slipped out of bed. She avoided all the squeaky floorboards and walked gently throughout the house as she did her morning routine and chores. After washing her face and having a small breakfast, she was finally ready to go outside and greet the day head on! Several storms had rolled past the area, so she had been happy to see that the sun was out and shining.

When Usachi opened the front door and stepped outside, a wave of different emotions washed over her. What started out as glee from seeing the clear sky above shifted into confusion and slight horror when her eyes dropped down to the ground. She expected that the storms would have pulled some of the pink leaves off of the nearby trees, but her entire porch was covered in not only countless pink leaves, but colorful flower petals and other plant foliage. If there were flower petals here, that meant they weren’t on the flowers, and that meant…!

There was no need to walk around carefully now. She stepped through the leaves and petals on her porch and moved down the small set of steps that lead to the rest of the lawn. With how much had been tossed around, she half expected the grass to be torn up as well. The green grass in front of her house was fine, but as she walked and made her way around to the side of her house she saw that her flowers were far from fine. Many of them were missing at least several colorful petals, and some of them were missing all of them.

As she was starting to mourn the loss of her beautiful flower beds, Seval had woken up and stepped outside to join her. They scratched their side and let out a yawn, not bothering to cover their mouth with their free paw.

“Told you that those storms were somethin’ else! Weren’t just in Faerindell, either. Still, sure made a mess of things ‘round here.”

That was one way of putting it. Now that the initial shock was beginning to fade, Usachi could start formulating a plan on what to do next. She made her way over to where she kept all her gardening tools, grabbed two pairs of garden gloves, and handed one of the pairs to Seval.

“Since you’re here, might as well clean up. I know you dont have anything else better to do!”

Seval opened their mouth to protest but couldn’t find the words to counter their friend’s claim. She was right of course, it’s not like they had any pressing business to attend to. With a small huff of defeat they took the gloves and put them on, not at all impressed by how the gloves felt on their paws. Usachi put her gloves on as well, grabbed a few tools, and began to give instructions on how to start cleaning up.

Seval eventually found themselves on the stone porch holding a broom, awkwardly moving the broom back and forth. This is how you sweep, right? They knew that pushing the flower petals and pink leaves back and forth wasn’t going to make them disappear. Seval eventually settled on just brushing them off the edge of the porch so they dropped and fluttered down onto the grass. 

Meanwhile, Usachi was working through reconstructing her flower beds. She carefully arranged the flowers that could still live and thrive while she uprooted the ones who needed to come back inside her house for some tender loving care. Once she was done with the flowers on the ground she turned her attention to the faerie shrouds that normally hung on the branches of the trees located near her house. She was surprised to see that they were all pretty much still intact, having clung to the tree branches for dear life during the storms. There were far less pink leaves on the trees than normal, but the bright purples and blues of the faerie shrouds still gave the trees some splash of color.

When Usachi went to go check on Seval’s cleaning progress she was… a little less than impressed. She couldn’t help but raise an eyebrow at their attempt to clean, AKA brush everything off the side. Usachi supposed it was her fault for not telling Seval where to put the leaves and flower petals. After grabbing a bag and explaining that they should bag up all the fallen leaves and foliage clutter, the two elnin spent another hour collecting everything off the ground and putting things into the bag Usachi provided. Once everything was said and done, the yard looked spotless! As much as an outside yard could look. Usachi was impressed and proud of their hard work while Seval just wanted to go inside for a drink. To reward themselves, Usachi made them some glasses of lemonade and let Seval flop back on the pile of blankets they had slept on the night before.

Now that the storms had passed and everything was cleaned up, Usachi hoped her flowers could now regrow and flourish!