I wake up in time to snooze the alarm before it wakes everyone up and make my way into a cloak and boots and head downstairs.
The door bell rings as I approach it, "good morning Jonstien, have the roads been good to you?" I allow him into the foyer and he opens a Space Pocket to pull out our mail.
"Good morning Lady Eli. The roads have been calm indeed. Today seems to have more packages than scrolls." He sets two big sacks of mail and grabs twenty eight boxes.
"You're very impressive Jonstein," I say as he sets the boxes down by the wall.
"Do you have anything for me?" I hand him the empty sack from yesterday, a red sack of invitation scrolls for all the Festival organizers.
"I'll be on my way. Have a good day, Lady Eli," I greet him goodbye and turn to find both Helia and Zelena grabbing the sacks and some boxes.
"I hope no one sent us any more cursed totems. I don't need another mirror breaking curse," Zelena mutters bitterly.
"You still owe me a mirror," Helia reminds us once more.
I grab the last of the boxes and join my sisters in the den. I take the fluffy chair and begin opening the packages I have in my possession.
The first box holds stones that cast illusions of your choice for an hour and a half. An elderly lady from the northern part of the territory confiscated them from her grandsons. Quite ingenious of the creator.
The next few were books through owners felt they weren't fit to be owners of.
"Anything good ladies?" Helia asks as she puts down a green scroll.
"By the way the hog pork cause last week had parasites, burn all meat and advise your local healers if you begin having extreme gas, constipation, diarrhea, extreme dehydration, and uncontrollable spasms," Helia keeps the letter on the center.
"We decided to eat chicken this week," I speak up, grateful I was out voted during last week's grocery shipping.
I begin opening the boxes Zelena grabbed and pulled out a few more magical artifacts from boxes. Since we became Guardians many have decided we were the ones are the best suit for Magical Objects they have been caring for.
"More magical objects we need a better category system than index cards. And a shelf in the basement," I sigh as I add the magical tool with the rest.
"We need proper shelving indeed. Tossing all those magical weapons in a trunk doesn't seem safe at all," I say as I begin sorting the belongings.
"Truth be told I think it's time we start looking for our own place. Goldie won't be here forever and all this stuff is now ours. She can't hold onto it forever," Helia sighs as she looks up from her scroll.
"Yeah except we are broke and literally unable to own anything," I say to her and remind her rent in our own is double the price a mortgage.
"Which is why we need to working more Guardian jobs. We can't afford to split time between magic and regular work yet. So we need to find a way to reach clients and then reach us," she sighs and hands us the scrolls.
"It's from two weeks ago," Zelena begins reading about sightings of Spider colony migrating being spotted in Eastern forest.
"If it was a new colony its most likely searching for food? Are you going to respond? We should watch the migration closely for they dont mention the type of spider they're watching? How long would it take to get a response?" Zelena asks as I start looking for a new scroll.
Helia grabs a pen and ink and she begins scribbling a message for the small forest town, "let's hope things worked out, the letter should take three days, I don't understand why they waited so long to say something," I mutter as I look at the message myself.
The doorbell rings, pulling us from the mail sorting, "good afternoon Eli sisters. Should we begin setting up?" I look at my watch.
"Oh its noon already! Yes the garden has been cleared out and we set up the tables yesterday. Please start," I say and she nods and rushes back out to prepare her team.
"Okay that's going to have to wait because we need to start prepping for the bonfire. Maybe we can make proper town connections and we can find a place to rent after the festival," I say optimistically.
We clean up the living room and I rush up stairs to get out of my pj's and into proper clothes. I pick a soft long skirted dark blue dress and put my hair into two high space buns with cute pins as extra accessories. I add my dark blue pants underneath and high knee boots.
I rush down to the outdoor kitchen and begin helping where i can. We hired a full grilling team of chefs for tonight lunch in so we didn't have to worry about cooking ourselves.
I help Ingrid set up the large umbrellas that will over over the open space of the garden. We set up a small stage in front of all the tables and put the food station behind the sitting area right off the kitchen area.
"Do you think they'll attend? The day is hotter than usual? But they'd want a redo of last year's failure too right?" I ask as we finish the stage.
"Let's hope so. Without the town revenue recovering well be the only shoveling snow to keep our streets clean this winter," Helia sighs as we take a moment to recall last years fiasco.
Due to tight funds and our fall floods causing major damaged to our sewers and shopping districts we had very little to spare on snow sweepers during the winter to keep the road nice and clean for every body.
"Do you think the Marquess will actually show?" I ask as we start dressing the table tops with light green fabrics.
"I think so. He was promoted to take over for the corrupt Duke of Hendieval. I think he needs the festival to go good especially after last year's fiasco," she sighs.
"It's easier to blame us for things going array than people to acknowledge that the Dukes actions seeped further than his shadow could reach," Zelena mutters bitterly as she joins us with the floral arrangements for the table.
"We weren't even Guardians yet," I mutter just as bitterly, before adding that this lunch in must go perfect for that very reason.
The waiting staff arrives and begins setting the decorated tables as we finish up the decorating.
It took an hour but everyone we sent invites to three weeks ago showed up ready with their own ideas and binders full of information.
The Marquess arrived late but it was due to a pack of animals running from the forest thru the town streets, he left a team to investigate and he traveled with a smaller group of people to attend our lunch in.
"Alrighty ladies and gentlemen, as we wait for the food to finish prepping I want to start off with pointing out a few things happening in and around our lands that could help us gain extra revenue," Helia speaks to the over seated tables.
More people than we anticipated showed up for many brought extra shop owners, and volunteers from different activities offered to come to give their own opinions. We had to pull out extra chairs and tables with no decorations just to sit everyone in attendance.
Zelena and I pull up a terrain map of ours and the territory of Duke Keros lands, as Zelena brings up the first event of the Festival.
"We have been monitoring a migrating Long Horn Cow herd coming from Duke Keros territory since they arrive at his border lands two weeks ago. It should reach our mountain planes this weekend and if they continue in the directions we believe the herd will arrive four days before the festival. I say we should make the Hunting Event a two day event starting the day before the Festival. The hunting and adventure parties will spend a pretty dime on repairs, potions and extra gear for the Hunt," Zelena and I remove the terrain map and replace it with a blank board.
"Secondly our lowest gossing activity is our theater shows. I believe it pulls too much time from the other activities no one wants to go. We were hoping for ideas on how to revamp the musical theater arts ideas. Now we also have been making lists of things people have been sending in that they believe we could fix or add," Zelena grabs the crate of scrolls and pulls out a small note pad.
"One idea that I think now is great to do because of the herd coming is a cooking and eating contests," Zelena points out before we start reading off the list.