Compared to the front of the house, someone might be surprised to see the pure size of the backyard of the little house in Coolsville. Though not large enough to warrant a driving mover, it was big enough to contain most of the more energetic games of Frisbee that the duo could come up with; and still have room to include several garden patches, (and Shaggy's Carnivorous plants) Velma's Butterfly bushes, and the infamous hammock.
…And all of it was covered in leaves.
"I can't believe that this amount could come from just those two trees." Daphne said with a snort, rake in hand. Once resigning to her fate, it didn't take her and Velma too long to dig out the rakes from the garage. Thankfully they had been put semi-close to the front door. So they didn't have to go diving in to get to them.
"That is a project for another day." Velma said with a sigh. Having five different owners, all with diverse likes and projects, there was little storage space for certain things. Especially when it came to things for outside use. With all the various things that they owned in that garage, it had become almost as bad as the seasonal closet in the basement… Almost.
Gripping the rake in hand, Velma was surveying the backyard with a keen eye. Taking a few calculated steps, she darted her head about the area. Almost like she was making mental marks of places that she was looking at. She was holding the rake in such a manner that caught her companion's attention. Daphne tilted her head, as she watched Velma analyze the expanse of lawn. A few steps here and there, the brunette seemed like she was muttering to herself, obviously trying to calculate something.
'If she is using some crazy math problem to calculate the volume of leaves that occupy the backyard at the moment… I'm going inside!'Daphne grumbled mentally to herself.
While she couldn't argue that Velma's mathematical mind comes in handy a lot of the time. Now was really not one of those times that it was needed. That, and Daphne had no desire to know how many pounds of leaves they would be trying to concur. Or a calculated estimate of how many leaves overall they would have to rake up. It was a ton of them! And she didn't mean a ton, in the standard of 2000lbs.
Bringing her attention back to watching the shorter woman, it only took a little bit more mumbling on Velma' part before she seemed to have figured out what ever she had been calculating.
"Here!"
Thrusting her rake into the ground, she moved quickly in a few directions with her rake going to work. Scraping a line across the grass, she gathered all the leaves into one pile in the middle. Efficiently cutting the mass of leaves into two equal sides.
"Ah." Daphne nodded, taking a good look at the two sides. As much as her eyes could tell her, the two looked equally parted. Though her mind couldn't really figure out how Velma could do such a thing with waving the rake a bit and some muttering, she wasn't going to knock it. It worked, why mess with it?
"Alright!" Velma beamed, feeling proud of her calculation and how well it had panned out. "Pick a side."
Resting the rake on the ground, Daphne leaned on it as she placed a hand to her chin. Since it was perfectly cut in half, she was trying to think about what she would have to rake around, to make her decision. While one side had the butterfly bush by it, there wasn't much else besides half the hammock and a bit of a garden against one side of the fence that surrounded the backyard. And the other side had the other half of the hammock, but tended not to have a clear marking of where Shaggy's Venus flytraps were.
"Do you know where… Ugh. What is that called again? Dino… Dina…" Daphne stumbled to find the right word that she was looking for. Forgetting the layman's term in favor for trying to recall the more complicated genus and species that even Shaggy could remember… Somehow.
"Where the…?" Turning to face Daphne, Velma was confused by the question till she was trying to say the name of the particular plant. Which came instantly to mind of the young woman, once the rough attempt of the genius had been spoken aloud.
"Oh, Dionaea muscipula. Not to be mistaken by the other snap trap species, Aldrovanda vesiculosa. Or the Waterwheel plant; which is the only extant variant in the flowering plant genus Aldrovanda in the family of Droseraceae… "Velma trailed off for a second before adding,
"…which was not your question. Rex. Shaggy's carnivorous plant. Yes, I know where he and the rest of them are planted. Why?"
"Well, since I don't know where they are, I'll pick the side that doesn't have them. I really don't want to accidentally step on them, or rake them up accidentally." Daphne knew how much the little guys meant to Shaggy. So she would rather leave it up to Velma, to make sure to avoid them and rake without disturbing them. She wasn't a big fan about plants that fed themselves, but she could appreciate the fact that Shaggy did. That and they had pretty flowers sometimes.
"Ah, makes sense. You will have that side then." Velma pointed out; thrusting the rake in the direction of the side she had already been on. Since it was the same side as the garage, and Daphne hadn't moved too far from it when Velma had started to sum up the sides of the lawn.
"That was nice of you to consider. I'll have to tell the guys, so they could thank you properly for the forethought." Velma said as turned her back to move more on her side. Her head was hanging down a bit, as she was scanning the ground as she was trying to figure out where she wanted to start raking. Daphne was thankful for the distraction, as her face went flush in embarrassment. Not so much about being thoughtful, but more that Velma had plans to tell the guys about it.
"Hmph!" She tried to sound more aloof then she was feeling. "Well you don't have to tell them that. Tell them instead that they should think about moving them somewhere out of the way. So that they won't be in my way."
Daphne snorted, turning her frustrations out on the leaves in front of her. Trying to keep her head down, until the blush left her face. Though if Velma had noticed, Daphne didn't know.
Silence had fallen between the two of them as they worked. No words were spoke, but there was the constant sound of the rakes hitting the leaves as they slowly gathered them on their respective sides. With her face returning to normal, she worked past the awkward moment she had before, and was actually getting into the raking when she cast a look over at Velma.
!
Looking over, Velma had moved herself far away from the line that cut the two parts in half. And she was systematically trying to gather all the leaves from one side to the other, eventually ending with the massive pile in the middle. While Velma wasn't even half way yet, she was making pretty good progress.
Looking back at her own work, Daphne hadn't planned it out that far. She had just started around the spot she had been standing and was gathering it into smaller piles she figured that she would pull towards the middle eventually. But she felt behind!
'I'm not going to lose to her!'Daphne thought, though her mind's determination surprised herself for a second. But giving it a second thought, there was nothing wrong with some friendly competition. Even if it was just in her own head.
But not wanting to lose, Daphne moved to her next spot and tried to speed up in her work. Raking the leaves with more energy and fervor. Kicking up the nearby foliage and pressed them towards the center with a purpose. But she made sure not to make it too obvious that she was competing, just in case Velma would think her silly for it. Increasing her speed and work gradually, so that the younger detective might not notice her subtle increase in work. Daphne hoped that Velma was too absorbed in her own work, to catch on.
The work continued like that for a while. Daphne snuck glances occasionally to keep tabs on Velma's progress. Pushing Daphne almost each time to do better; even if she felt like she was winning against the other woman at the time. Winning made her want to win by more of a margin, loosing meant she needed to pick up the pace… But they were each more than half way finished.
"I hope you don't mind… But I've been competing against you the whole time."
Whipping her head from where she was working, Daphne stared at Velma's back as she desperately tried to understand the statement that she had just clearly heard from the other woman. Blinking a few times, Daphne was slow to fully understand what had just happened.
Wait… this whole time; Velma had been competing against me? Same as I was pushing myself to do with her?
"Wahahahahahahaha!" Bursting out into laughter caused the younger woman to look over at Daphne with a look of surprise look of her own. Maybe Velma had been thinking along the same lines this whole time, and felt bad for competition against her friend without telling her. So she decided to say it aloud, with an off handed manner. Not really knowing how Daphne would react. The explosion of laughter had not really high on her list of reactions, she had been expecting from the red head.
"I was doing the same thing!" Daphne admitted, finally able to get herself under control enough to get it out past her giggles. This whole time… and they had been thinking the very same thing!
With Daphne admitting it, Velma understood the laughter and joined in with a set of giggles. A bemused smile gracing her face, twisting it to one side. And here Velma thought the most likely outcome, would be Daphne getting annoyed at her. So it was a relief to find out they were thinking the very same thing.
It took a little bit, before their giggles tapered off and they found themselves snickering at each other. But something caught Daphne's eye. Even though she had been distracted with giggling, Velma had continued to rake unconsciously, and had caught up to the lead that Daphne had been able to establish earlier. Wide eyed, Daphne soon switched it to an accusing squint towards Velma. She knew that she probably wasn't trying to do it on purpose… or was she…
"I'll beat you Dinkley! You're going down!" Daphne shouted with a laugh, using Velma's last name to issue the challenge. Putting her family pride on stake, along with personal pride.
"Bring it on Blake. You'll be eating my dust!" Velma challenged back, smile never leaving her face. The spark of friendly competition, igniting both of their fighting spirits!
As the daylight started to fade, it didn't take long for the two ladies at their heightened rate of competition to finish collecting all the leaves into one, glorious pile in the middle of the backyard. Pushed and stacked up tall, the mound of leaves had to be at least five feet in diameter, and had a circumference of over fifteen feet. (Though it was more like 5.2 feet with a 16.336281798669 circumference... But only Velma was really thinking that far.) Though it wasn't as tall of either one of them, it still stood far higher than either had expected. Walking around it, Daphne joined Velma at looking at their masterpiece. Leaning on the shoulder of her shorter companion, they both looked over at the color spectrum of autumn condensed into one big pile.
"Wow… Ok, that was fun." Daphne said, letting out a breath as she was finally coming down from her adrenaline rush to try to beat Velma in time. Velma was catching her breath too, having pushed herself in that last little bit.
"Yeah, that was." Velma smiled, wrapping her arm around Daphne's waist to help keep up with the taller woman's stride. Mentally thinking about breaking into the Monkee walk, though her arm would have to strain to comfortably sit upon Daphne's shoulder. But she doubted the woman was feeling silly enough to do that at the moment. As much as Velma felt like breaking into it.
"You seem in a good mood…" Daphne said, looking down over at Velma. "…Even though I won."
"Sure sure, you keep thinking that." Velma mused, giving Daphne a hip bump. "I clearly won that one by a few rake fulls!"
"Nuh uh!" Daphne responded maturely, enjoying the friendly banter.
"Uh huh!"
"Nuh uh!"
"Uh huh!" Velma argued back, though finally added a raspberry at the end to up the ante. Not wanting to lose against Daphne in this silly exchange either.
"Oh real mature Dinkley." Daphne snorted back, returning the hip bump.
Authors note: This is loosely based on an exchange between me and my brother that happened once. When we were kids, we used to go at each other over and over again. But as we got older, it became more out of habit to compete then the actual desire to beat each other.
Though, I remember with great detail about the events building up to the reveal of the mutual competition... For the life of me, I can't remember who won. XD
