One summer’s day at the cottage, Pepe and Toro overheard somebody talking about “sauna elves”.
“Sauna elves? What on earth are they?” Toro wondered aloud. “Never heard”, said Pepe, shaking his head. And so the two chums resolved to go to the sauna to check things out.
When they got to the sauna, they started searching.
They looked inside the sauna stove…
…and they peeked into the sauna pail
…and they crawled under the benches, but they didn’t see any sign of elves anywhere.
“We’ll wait”, said Pepe. And they waited in the sauna all night.
They left the light on, so it wasn’t too scary.
And the next day, they sat there on the window-ledge all day long, but there was no sign of any sauna elves.
“Hmm”, said Toro. “Maybe these elves are hiding somewhere else?”
“Do you think they might be in the tepee in the garden?” Pepe wondered. “I mean, they might have thought the tepee was the sauna”, he said.
They ran to the tepee, but there were no elves to be seen.
Pepe and Toro didn’t give up. They decided to wait.
And they waited and waited and waited. And they looked everywhere.
Pepe even peered at a lemonade bottle, but he didn’t find anything inside except lemonade.
But Pepe and Toro were not about to give up. They found a big book about elves and gnomes and other little guardian spirits, which was full of pictures and useful information.
Pepe and Toro learned, for instance, that there are all sorts of OTHER elves, not just in the sauna. There are elves that live in the stable with the horses, garden elves, barn elves, forest elves, elves that make their home in the house, and of course, Santa Claus’s very special elves.
So Pepe and Toro expanded their search.
They looked high and low for elves, peeking into little shelters in the forest, and into barns like this one, in the middle of a field, but they still couldn’t find any sign of any elves.
Pepe and Toro were a bit sad, but they decided to forget the whole elf hunting thing, and then, one day, weeks later…
They arrived to spend the night at a very old guesthouse, and WHAT do you think they saw?
By the steps to the front door, hidden among the bushes, there was something hiding – something red and white.
And you know what it was?
It was an ELF, or really a GARDEN GNOME!!!
Pepe and Toro could not believe their eyes. They snuggled up next to the little elf.
“You know what I think?” Pepe turned to his friend. “I think elves and gnomes only live around very old houses”, he said, nodding his head firmly.
“Yep, and even there they are very well hidden”, added Toro with a big smile.
Pepe & Toro 