Finished March 2001

"Do you think," he panted, trudging along under the weight of his travel pack, "that maybe, for just one single moment, you could STOP singing?"

"No," she giggled, prancing along the road as if her pack was light as a feather.

He wondered if she'd sneaked some of her gear into his pack again. He cursed the exthief that had been her last partner, shifted the bundle on his shoulder, and aimed a glare at the pointed ears sticking out of her bouncing red-gold curls. "How can you be so ding-blasted cheerful?"

She laughed, spinning and walking backward for a moment. "It's springtime!" she proclaimed, spreading her arms wide, throwing her head back. She turned back around and kept going, as if that explained everything.

"Elves," Keller muttered, dropping his head to watch the ground go by benaeth his weary feet. Tuleigh was always like this in the springtime, and it drove the grumpy human crazy. His ageless partner seemed to consider this an added bonus. Keller was just the most recent in a long line of adventuring partners for Tuleigh. He wasn't quite certain just how old his companion was, but she'd mentioned three former partners that he could call to mind, and seemed to have been with each of them for as long as they'd been able-bodied.

He'd once asked her why she always partnered with humans. She'd wrinkled her cute, annoying little elven nose at him and told him that she never had to worry that she'd fall in love with a human. He'd thought she was joking at the time. Now, having seen what an outrageous flirt she was among her own race and the total disinterest she had for all the rest, he was inclined to think differently.

Finally he veered off the road. "I'm gonna make camp, I can't go another step."

"One, two, three, four..." Keller blinked, and then realized she was counting the steps he'd taken since that statement. He stopped and gave her a dark look. She grinned back innocently.

He reached a clearing and dropped his pack, straightening with his hands on his lower back. "Well, I--" He turned, only to see Tuleigh's pack on the ground. There was no sign other of the elf. He swore soundly. "Not only do I partner with a stinkin' elf, I gotta get a damn Sky-Priestess too..."

"Mock not that which you do not understand, mortal!" He jumped as the voice echoed through the clearing, and grimaced at the laughter that followed.

"Tuleigh!" he thundered, "Git back here and help me make camp before you go off on some--"

"Ah, but I am already gone!"

"TULEIGH!!" There was no answer. Swearing under his breath, he resigned himself to the all-too-common situation and began to build a firepit. He had no idea what she did when she took off on her own, though he thought it might be some thing to do with the whole Priestess-thing. He didn't hold much with religion, himself, but Tuleigh was sworn to the sky aspect of the Elven Trinity. She was as fierce in her devotion as she was lax in everything else.

Of course, he wasn't sure what those duties meant. Some part of it involved chronicling; apparently the Sky-Born were charged with keeping the records of the Elves. Tuleigh, he had surmised over time, was charged with observing and recording other races. The gods--and the Elves--only knew what she put in her chronicles about *him*.

His nightly grumbles completed along with the chores of pitching camp, he leaned against a rock padded with a folded up blanket with a sigh. He shifted his abused feet toward the fire and wiggled his toes. I'm buying a horse at the next town we come to. Expenses be damned! Let the little elven witch try and sing when she's the one lagging behind... Whatever else Tuleigh was, she was also cheap--at least when it came to his human comforts.

Keller started to doze lightly, his pessimistic thoughts running familiar, worn paths in his mind, skipping lightly over anything that could possibly be considered a plus. Tuleigh's loyalty, her fighting and tracking skils, her compassion, her eternally-youthful enthusiasm--his gruff point of view never allowed him to dwell on the reasons they had become partners in the first place. The closest he could come was at least she always shows up when she's really needed, or I'd have dissolved our partnership ages ago.

He was almost asleep when something hard connected with his ribs with a loud crack, and pain exploded in his side. He rolled and came up on his feet, favoring his wounded side heavily. He'd snatched up his sword as he went and it now dangled loosely from his deceptively lax grip. "Oh, you got no idea who you're messing with," he growled, wishing he could lend the statement a little more force by standing upright. He was robbed of what little dignity he had left when his bare foot encountered something sharp, causing him to stumble to one side drunkenly.

The bandit just grinned, and lunged at him. Still off-balance, the warrior lurched back, out of reach of the man's darting knife. The thief grinned wider, hooking the pack Keller had lain close by his side with an agile foot and sending it flying back toward his companions. The man gave a mocking bow as one of the band picked up Tuleigh's abandonned pack, and others moved toward the cookwhere Keller had set out by the fire.

Already embarassed, pained, and grumpy, Keller was not about to let them add "robbed" to the list of the day's aggravations.

He rushed the man with a roar, swinging his broadsword with enough force to cleave the man in two--if he had still been there. The theif dodged easily, still smirking. Keller's anger mounted; the man was enjoying this! How dare he have be having fun. Keller feinted and swung again, coming closer but still not hitting the man. As he stepped back to prepare for another blow, his bare feet encountered a sharp stone, and his curse made the bandit's eyebrows lift in admiration.

Keller lunged forward again, and this time his fury paid off--almost. The bandit's shirt was torn from his hip to his shoulder; that at least took the grin from the man's face. From the sour look on the thief's face, it was his favorite, and Keller damn well hoped it was. "Damn you, Tuleigh!" he spat with venom, advancing on the bandit again with an extremely undignified limp.

"Well, if you wanted a hand, all you ever had to do was ask!" Tuleigh's maddeningly amused voice echoed once more in the clearing, and there was a great flash of light, a clap like thunder, and all the men in the clearing dropped to the ground--including Keller.

Elves, his mind grumbled as he fell, paralized. His eyes glared daggers as his partner's cheerful, heart-shaped appeared in his line of sight, blocking his view of the dark clouds drifting in overhead.

"You should've run," she told him, grinning. A low growl was all he could manage. "Temper, temper," she grinned. "I'm the one that should be annoyed here. You've left them all for a little thing like me to drag together and tie up."

Keller was profoundly not sorry.

"Oh well, at least the spell will keep you still while I clean the cuts on your feet."

Keller would have grimaced, if he could.

She sighed deeply and shrugged. "Humans."