Moving In

In the morning I get a call from Emma, telling me that she’s made her decision. She asked if the offer to let them move in with us was still good. I told her it was, and that we have a spare room in one of the spires in my castle. She’d muttered to herself that this is crazy (which I kind of agree), and asked when they could move in.

I told her today if they liked, and she agreed. She asked how we’d do it, and I explained the process of me being able to teleport stuff inside the barrier from the mundane world while I’m near it. And that’s how I ended up in the car with Skylar driving over to the address Emma gave us.

We pull up to a place only about 20 minutes drive North from the Fateweaver barrier. The first word that comes to mind is ‘cozy’ as I look around the area. It seems a nice place for families to live, without the noise of high rise buildings around everywhere. There’s some bushland nearby and most of the properties around have nice backyards.

Skylar and I walk up to the door and I knock. There’s some jostling, and Emma opens the door. She gives me a tired smile. “Thanks for coming so quickly.” She says, stepping back to let us through. “Of course.” I reply simply. We walk inside and she closes the door behind us, before hugging us both.

We separate and she takes us through to the living room where Lena is waiting. Lena’s just finishing up a round of Mario Party on their Switch. “Yay I won! Hey y’all!” She exclaims, sprinting towards us. I chuckle as she crashes into me, hugging me tightly, then letting me go and hugging Skylar just as tightly.

“Thank y’all so much for this. Living scared sucks.” Her smile falters for a moment, then her face is the same cheerful way it always is. “Before we start moving stuff over, I was wondering about a few things?” Emma asks. I nod, gesturing for her to continue. “Why weren’t we freezing yesterday when we went into your thingy…erm…barrier?” She asks.

“Adding you to my party automatically gave you a buff called ‘comfy cold’. It makes it so the cold doesn’t affect you at all, and it just feels really pleasant, even though you’re surrounded by snow.” I explain quickly. Emma nods, still looking weirded out by the concept but accepting it. “Riiight…is that buff gonna apply to the babies?” She asks, gesturing at the two cages in the room.

I look closer and see the two adorable parrots Emma told us they have, Link and Zelda, who have been silent up until now. Upon noticing we’re looking at them, Link starts to chirp furiously, with Zelda adding in one here and there. ‘Weep weep. Weep weep.’ He goes, and I can’t help but laugh. “They’re so cute!” I comment.

Lena’s face lights up. “I know right! They’re our little baby birbs! We love them.” She giggles happily. I turn back to Emma. “Uh I don’t think so, but we have two kittens at home and they’ve been fine so far. There’s a magical heat seal inside the castle that keeps temperatures pleasant all the time, despite the constant cold outside. If they’re inside, they’ll be perfectly okay with the temperature.” I explain.

Emma slaps a hand to her forehead. “Right, I forgot you have cats! That might be a bit of a problem…” She trails off, unsure what to do. I shrug. “The castle is pretty big. Our cats usually either stay in the living room or follow Ivy and me around. If you keep their cages somewhere separate, I don’t think it’ll be a problem.” Emma nods slowly.

“Sure, I guess we can do that. Do you have a room other than our bedroom we could keep their cages in?” She asks. I nod. “Yeah we have a ton of unused rooms.” I tell her. “Okay, thank you. I know this is a weird question but like, you have wifi right?” Emma asks. “Yep, magically fast speeds too. Ridiculously quick upload and download speed, it’s pretty great actually.” I reply.

“Oh, that’s good. Lena and I both work from home, so we need wifi for that.” She explains. “Oh yeah easy, we can take care of that.” I reassure. “Okay great. Do we just start moving stuff now?” Emma asks. I nod. “Let’s go to the bedroom, we’ll start with that. I’ll teleport everything in your bedroom to your room in the castle.” I say.

What follows is the process of going back and forth between my castle and Emma and Lena’s place, bringing stuff with us, helping them set it up, moving things and doing the heavy lifting since it’s much easier for us with superhuman strength and magic that lets us carry a bunch of things at the same time.

It does take a while, but eventually we do manage to get everything set up properly. It’s an easy tap of a button to replace the default castle bed with Emma and Lena’s bed they share. Moving other stuff around, putting things in cupboards, hanging up clothes, moving display pieces where they want them to be, all the little stuff takes time.

We manage to finish in a few hours. We find one of the rooms in the palace that suits their needs perfectly: close by enough to be able to hear them if something’s wrong and for them to still know where Lena and Emma are most of the time, but far enough away that our kittens don’t really take an interest in them. They’re more interested in napping most of the time anyway.

Finally as we set the last thing down, Lena breathes a sigh of relief and flops onto the bed. “Finally! I’m so glad we’re done, holy shit that was long and boring.” She says. I giggle at her reaction and Emma smiles tiredly. “The past couple days has been crazy.” She says, apparently barely believing it herself. “It’s a lot to take in.” I empathise. “No kidding.” She replies, sighing.

We stand in silence for a few more seconds. “Oh by the way, I don’t know if you were planning to, but don’t cancel your lease or anything. It’s good to have a backup outside of this in case something happens to me or whatever.” I tell Emma.

She shakes her head. “Wasn’t planning on it, but thank you.” She says. “Money isn’t much of an issue in the abyss, so if you need help with anything, don’t hesitate to ask.” I tell her. “Thank you. Oh, we were gonna join your guild too?” She asks, and I nod. “Yep, I just have to send the formal invite, same as the party thing.” I tell her.

“Wanna do that now?” Lena asks, getting up from the bed, looking excited. Just then, Ivy walks in the door to check on our progress. “We finished! Just about to join your guild.” Lena tells her happily. Ivy smiles. “I’m really glad.” She says warmly.

I clear my throat, deciding to ask verbally as well as send the invite. “Lena and Emma, will you help us and fight with us? Will you join with us?” I ask, mentally sending the windows. The windows appear in front of them, one each. “Yes!” Lena exclaims, tapping the yes button. “Yes, I will.” Emma says, also confirming. “Welcome to The Centurions.” I say simply.