August 17, 2002
Featuring Survivor and Surefire in a collection of stories, all placed in the house of Havik. Survivor and Surefire tend to bring all sorts of trouble and fun to the life of their humans, Sandra and Tamara.
Part 1
It's a dark night, not that cold. You can hear a strange clicking around the place where you are. Survivor is sighing in his furs.
"Sandra! Please do something about that, will you?!"
Sandra turns around and looks from her computer to her elf friend. "About what, Survivor? Why are you sighing so?" She says with a big grin and in a tone that says 'I know exactly what you want, but I don't.'
"That cubling Chieftess of yours! She's driving me crazy!"
"Ik ben geen welp! [I'm not a cub!]" Nachtzang yells from the bed in the back of the room.
"Of course you are not," Survivor says teasingly, "I'm 752 and you are already 23!"
Nachtzang turns around again, not wanting to start a fight she was sure to loose. She started singing and not long after a second voice joined the song.
"Ohh noo, Sandra! Now two cubs are singing!" complained Survivor. Nachtzang and Regenboog were giggling and they knew by now that Survivor wouldn't stop complaining so they just went on singing, just to tease him. Sandra would not let him hurt them. Survivor sighed again.
Sandra was also giggling, but she hid her face behind her screen. She listened to the depressed Survivor, being bored to death.
"You want something to do? Other than getting irritated by Nachtzang and Regenboog? Go play with Snowstorm, she's bored too."
Survivor looked with big eyes to the back of Sandra's head. "Snowstorm? All she wants to do is gamble and preferably with gold or silver! I don't have any! And I can never win from her - I think she cheats!" Survivor looked up at the golden haired elf on top of the closet. She was playing with her dice and her axe was right besides her, looking very frightening.
"Well Survivor, if you don't have any gold, try to persuade her to play with twigs, you'll find them outside, a lot of trees over there," Sandra replied.
The Wolfrider stumbled over his words.. "You call that 'a lot of'? 'Trees?' They are spaced 30 metres apart and aren't even twice my height! They are like twigs in the ground-" He goes suddenly very quiet…
"Can I play with those?"
Part 2
Surefire and Survivor woke up and groaned. Here at the house of the human family called Hawk it was rarely quiet. To the elves irritation, it was in the daytime that they made the most noice. Right now there was laughing coming from the back garden.
**What are those humans up to now?** Surefire sent irritably.
Survivor shrugged. "Sounds like yours and mine."
Surefire made a face at Survivor. **I wouldn't call Tamara my human yet.**
Survivor, already halfway through the livingroom, sent back to his grumpy companion, **Whatever you say.**
The room was in it's normal state of cosy choas with computers on almost every free table space, the rest covered with pieces of paper and every other immaginable object. Sometimes the family joked about it, saying they all suffer from Horror Vacui (fear of empty spaces).
The two elves soon came to the window in the back wall that looked out into the garden. The window was low and seemed to be made escpecially for elves, a human would have to duck to look through it, or sit on a chair. The house cat, Oliver, meowed at the two elves, he didn't dare hiss after what happened the last time... The elves ignored him and looked out into the garden.
Sandra and Tamara were sitting opposite to each other at a blue table, in blue chairs. Why blue? They were playing some sort of card game, but the cards didn't have any of the normal pictures on them. Tamara was looking very sad now, for some reason, and was pointing to Sandra's hand pleading, "My cards!"
Sandra just grinned evily and Tamara smiled.
They played on, the rules were an absolute mistery to the elves. They had a hand full of cards that they exchanged. Everytime one of them took a card from it and put one face down on the table until there were four on the table and two in the hands of both girls.
Surefire raised an eyebrow, **What are they doing?**
Survivor just shrugged, **How should I know?**
Tamara said something the elves couldn't understand and Sandra looked defeated. "There's a flaw in my strategy. There's a flaw in my strategy," she kept repeating. Tamara just smiled at the seven cards in front of her and then at the meager three in front of Sandra.
Apparently they were done exchanging cards and Tamara seemed eager to put down a card. "Murderer!" she called, much to the alarm of Survivor, but she hesitated.
"Who's king?" Tamara asked.
"I am." Sandra lifted up another card that had been lying in front of her on a pedestal. It had the picture of a crown on it.
Sandra repeated what Tamara had said, but less enthusiastic, "Murderer?"
Tamara brightened as she layed open her card once more. "Condotierre!"
Sandra sighed. "Told you there was a fault in my strategy."
Sandra started calling up more names.
"Thief."
"Mage."
Every time she waited till Tamara might speak up.
"King."
Tamara flipped her second card, showing a picture of a king, she grabbed three gold coloured coinlike things. She took her time counting the cards lined up in front of her and came up with seven. Tamara grinned at her once blond, now brown-haired sister, who looked quite miserable, shoved three of the coins back to the middle of the table, put down a card and said triomphantly: "Eight!"
Sandra played on, muttering it was no use, and layed down another card too.
"I get extra points for being first and for having all colours," Tamara said and counted her points to 29.
Sandra growled. "You've won, 25."
All Surefire and Survivor could do was exchange a puzzled look.