<A Tale of Two Sisters - Dorothea/Diana 1>

	Gilneas was often known for its exceptionally eerie and chilling climate toward the end of the year, but even as temperatures dropped, the worgen were well-adapted to the cold.  Their fur often grew thicker as time passed, and walking around in the outdoors in fifty degree weather was akin to seventy for the average human.  As such, the pair of worgen sisters seemed more than comfortable as they set out from Shadowclaw Manor, taking a slow turn in the late afternoon and heading around behind the ominous-looking building.

	“Come onnnn ya big baby, it’s not even that far,” Diana chastised her sister, half-pulling her along by one hand as they walked, heading for the water’s edge.

	Dorothea rolled her eyes and huffed.  “Di, I’m three months pregnant, and I’m not going to risk a fall.  Why are you dragging me out here anyway?”

	The normally-cheerful Diana wasn’t quite as chipper as usual, and it took her a moment for her to slow down at her sister’s request.  “I just… thought it would be fun to, well, go for a swim like the old days,” she admitted, eyeing the pond just out back of the manor.

	The older of the two sisters glanced at the pond, then back to Diana skeptically.  “Is that [i]all[/i]?”

	Diana’s ears visibly drooped, and she released Dorothea’s clawed hand.  “Is that what you think of me, Dory?”

	”Explain,” Dorothea returned and crossed her arms over her furred chest.

	Diana frowned and mimicked her sister’s stance.  “I think you owe me more of an explanation for where this is coming from.”

	”Past experience,” she said matter-of-factly.  “I’ve known you since you were born, and… you’ve always been the favorite, so you tend to get whatever you ask for, leading you to ask for more and more.  Plain and simple.”

	The mage was half in shock.  “Okay, wow.  I smell a [i]fuckload[/i] of resentment here.”

	”It’s hard not to,” Dorothea admitted, her gaze darkening.  “You’ve had things so good for a very long time.  I haven’t.  And forgive me if I have a hard time trusting a request that likely has strings attached, like that time early on you wanted to visit, only to ignore Starla and I and sleep on my sofa to meet up with a guy in Stormwind.  That was the last straw.”

	Clear pain showed in Diana’s eyes.  ”Come, Dory, [i]Must[/i] I have an ulterior motive for everything?  Can’t we just be, y’know, sisters for a little while?”

	”That’s… easier said than done,” the rogue returned, knowing in the back of her mind that each word was cutting to Diana.  “We were apart for a very long time, thanks to you.”

	Diana was known to be playful more than anything, and she was not easy to anger.  But in that moment, she saw red.  Faster than Dorothea could register, Diana grabbed her by the arm and outright flung her into the pond, the worgen crashing into the mostly-shallow water with a thunderous splash.  “THANKS TO ME!?  How [i]dare[/i] you!  Is [i]this[/i] why you’ve been giving me the cold shoulder lately?!  I apologized for what I did!  I pushed Dad when I shouldn’t have, but if you’d just [i]listened[/i] when I wanted to [i]talk[/i] to you about it, you might not’ve just up and ABANDONED your family for over a goddamn decade!”

	Had she been a mere human, the toss might’ve been dangerous, but the gray-furred worgen easily shrugged off the shock and sat upright in the shallow water, unharmed.  If anything, it felt better than she was expecting it to feel, though her clothes had been immediately soaked through.  Her eyes went wide as she stared at her sister, her canine mouth hung open, but no words came out.

	“But I’ve tried [i]hard[/i] to let that go, and I feel like I’m better for it… but every time you snip and snap at me, it all just comes flooding back!  What happened to my [i]sister[/i], Dory!?  The person I used to come to with all my problems is… she’s practically dead, the way she acts now!  Is it so much to ask for a little comfort from time to time!?”

	”Diana-“

	”Shut up!” The mage growled, almost looking like she could pounce at a moment’s notice.  Her voice kept getting louder and more gravelly by the moment.  “I know what you’ve been through since Warren died.  You raised Starla all on your own, made a living as best as you could, and now you’ve got your big happy family again!  But what about [i]me[/i]!?  What have [i]I[/i] been through, Dory!?”

	Dorothea’s mind was coming up painfully blank.  “I… I don’t know.”

	”That’s right!  You don’t!  You haven’t even so much as [i]asked[/i]!  My own sister gives no fucks about the struggles of an adult mage who lives in her father’s shadow, enchanting his wares and taking her meager cut without argument!  The mage who can’t seem to get it right with a man who isn’t her own flesh and blood!  The mage who might never be able to have children, while her stupid older sister gets to have two!”  Diana’s screaming left her breathless, and tears had formed in her soft green eyes.

	A light breeze could’ve blown the rogue over.  She knew there was nothing she could say to make anything better, but she also was certain that doing nothing might be the final straw of a relationship she hadn’t realized had disintegrated.  In a flash of smoke, the worgen disappeared, replaced by the human, her shoulder-length brown hair soaked and hanging around her face.  Her white dress clung to her as she waded toward her sister, then silently threw her arms around Diana’s high shoulders.  “I’m sorry,” was all she dared to say at that moment.

	Diana reluctantly lowered her arms as she looked down at her sister’s face, and for a moment it almost felt like they were little again, before things got so complicated.  Memories of jumping and swimming together, playing in the mud when they weren’t supposed to, abandoning their dresses for shorts, creating their own stick worlds and building stick figures to inhabit them, all flooded her mind.  A gout of smoke engulfed her as well, revealing a strikingly similar, round face with freckled, sun-kissed cheeks.  She stood a meager inch shorter than her sister, but what she lacked in height she made up for with a particularly prominent chest, which inadvertently pressed up tightly against her sister’s modest bust.  Her hair was identical in color, though Diana’s was much longer, stretching nearly halfway down her back, and didn’t have the wave that Dorothea’s did.  Her white sundress was identical to her sister’s, though it had no room for a pregnant belly like Dorothea’s did.
