Chapter Ten: At Home in Idris
"Well, we're here at last!" Jace exclaims, as the last of us come through the portal, with the remainder of our belongings which weren't brought over earlier. He turns the key in the lock and lets us all in, holding the door open for us.
"Great, now we just have to unpack and decide where to put everything. At least we already furnished the place so we basically only have to arrange our personal belongings." I say.
"Aww, well hopefully there is still some decorating to be done? That's the thing I was most looking forward to!" Magnus sighs.
"Well if you'd like you can hang pictures. That's sort of like decorating. And if you could please find a place to hang my Desiderata that would help too." I smile, thrusting a cardboard box at him full of pictures etc.
"It looks like those curtains we had ordered finally arrived and our caretaker must have brought them in. They're here now and they have to be hung and there are a lot of windows to cover. Jonathan, would you help for while please? If we're still at it when Jace and Clary finish unpacking their things, they can spell you off." Izzy asks, batting her eyes.
"Yeah no problem Iz, although for Clay to spell me off, you might have to get her a step ladder." Jon teases.
"Hey! No short jokes." I pout, smacking him playfully.
"Where do you guys want this?" Alec asks, holding up a length of cloth netting. "And what is it for?" He puzzles.
"That can go in the spare room for now, I guess. And it's a hammock... for my teddy bears." I say, blushing slightly.
"You do know you're eighteen years old, right?" Jace chimes in. "See, we don't need to make short jokes, Jon, she gives us enough fodder without them." He laughs, ruffling my hair up.
"What is this, pick on Clary day?" I ask laughing, because I know their just giving me a hard time and not serious.
"Nope, that's tomorrow Babe. This is kiss-Clary-all-over-until-she's-too-aroused-to-care-how-much-we-tease-her Day." Izzy says. "And I think I might need to take a temporary rain check on hanging those curtains while I ravage my woman. Sorry boys!" She giggles, scooping me up and carrying me off to her bedroom.
Since the manor house is six bedrooms, we chose to have a big 'family room' for the communal bedroom and then each take a smaller room for our own so that we have our own space as well, leaving one room as a guest/spare room. Although if we have a larger number of guests, each of our rooms can be used as a guest room, as we'll all primarily be sleeping in the family room.
"But Izzy, doesn't it make more sense to hang the curtains first, since the point of the curtains is to offer us privacy?" I inquire.
"Psh! Says the exhibitionist. You know, we live in the countryside now, if anyone comes all the way out here just to peak in our windows, they deserve a show, I'd say." She laughs.
"Mmmn! I like the way you think Izzy Baby!" I say, kissing her passionately. The nice thing about being in our own place, we don't even bother to lock the bedroom door. Heck if Alec and Magnus weren't here, we probably wouldn't even have bothered to shut the door.
By the time we emerge from the boudoir, both blissfully happy and satisfied, Jonathan has most of the curtains hung in the common areas of the house already and Jace is completely unpacked. Magnus has all of the pictures hung as well as my Desiderata, which hangs beautifully in the front hall. Alec unpacked all of the boxes that don't belong in the bedrooms, and is now cooking us breakfast.
Idris is in a totally different time zone than New York, being as it's halfway around the world. So when we arrived, at around ten o'clock in the evening NY time, it was around six o'clock in the morning here. Everyone's been unpacking etc. for three hours straight (except Izzy and I but believe you me we were working up an appetite too) so we're all ravenous by the time breakfast is ready. Thankfully we thought to buy groceries or we'd be all dropping dead from hunger!
"This looks great Alec, thank you!" I say, as we all gather around at the table. He's made us bacon, eggs, hash browns and waffles.
"Yes, thank you Alec and we're grateful to both of you for all of your help!" Izzy tells them. "We couldn't do all of this without you, at least not nearly so quickly and efficiently." She smiles.
"Yeah and at this rate we may actually get through this before we all collapse from exhaustion." Jace grins. Yesterday was a long day and what with the time change, none of us have slept. It's making for quite the long day but we'd rather get all the work done now so we can play later.
"And you made bacon, so obviously I'm happy!" Jon says, taking a huge pile. Jocelyn raised the boys on a vegan diet, so now that they can eat meat, they've become a little obsessive about doing so.
"Well it's no problem. And Magnus and I are happy to help, aren't we?" Alec assures us.
"You bet. Any excuse for utilizing my uncanny ability for making things beautiful." Magnus smirks.
After breakfast, we clean up and get back to work. Everything's almost done. Jonathan and Izzy and I have our personal belongings left to unpack and then it's mostly just the finishing touches.
Alec and Magnus will be staying in the guest room for the two weeks they're here in Idris. So we let them set it up the way they want it, knowing Magnus can just use magic to do it and not have to really change anything around.
By lunch time, everything is completely finished and the house looks amazing! However after how long we've all been awake for, we decide take time for a nap so that we can stay up this evening and celebrate our first night in our new home.
We nap away the afternoon and wake up just before dinner. After we eat, we stay up late visiting with Alec and Magnus. They have prepared a housewarming basket for us, which Magnus must have been hiding all this time with magic because it's a total surprise to us. It's stuffed to the brim with all kinds of goodies. There are champagne and chocolates, flavored coffee and biscotti, loose leaf tea and honey complete with an infuser ball and one of those wooden honey dipper thingy's. There is fruit (both fresh and dried), candies and cookies. And there are eight mugs and a matching serving tray.
There are even some coffee table books based on our personal tastes. Jace's is a book of Sheet Music, Izzy's is a copy of Vogue, Jonathan's is a travel book called 1000 ultimate experiences, and mine is actually a blank sketchbook style book but the pages are all plastic covers with slide out inserts of drawing paper, so that I can insert my sketches and they will be protected.
We gush over the presents and thank them profusely. They are pleased at our response and Jace agrees to play some of the songs out of his new song book for us. He nails them surprisingly well, considering he hasn't played most of them before although he says he's heard most of the tunes. Eventually we all turn in, exhausted after celebrating with champagne and music and having a glorious first night in our new home.