Once upon a time there were two girls, they were sisters, who grew up in a home where inappropriate, bizarre, extravagent and eccentric anger were the norm. They were possessed of a mother who was singularly peculiar, and a father who studiously ignored the entire situation. Every day was a carnival of the surreal in which the psyches of the young girls were ultimately formed in such a way that they had a very high tolerance for wierd behaviour of all sorts. Actually it must be admitted they rather enjoyed the wierd and even sought it out on occasion. But let us not get ahead of ourselves, there will time for that later.

The older was dark of hair and personality as well. If she were a teenager today, she would probably be goth. She viewed her situation as a tragedy and fittingly, this was her name. Tragedy took herself much too seriously! Full of angst she spent her days in philisophical befuddlement asking questions that had no answers. She avoided her family as much as possible preferring to spend her time in an old, moldy cave nearby the family cottage singing funeral dirges.

The youngest was fair of hair with a personality to match. If she were a teenager today she might be scouted out to star in a Disney movie. She viewed her situation as a comedy and took nothing seriously, least of all herself. So she was called Joy. And she spent her time flitting prettily about! On warm summer evenings when windows were open, Joy's melodious, twinkling laughter could be heard floating through the scented twilight. It charmed the neighbors to no end. And though a story about Joy would certainly be so much more enjoyable than one about Tragedy, tragically, this one is about Tragedy!

Well, as may be expected Joy was much more popular than Tragedy...whom most people avoided. Bereft of company as she was, she began to study sorcery hoping that perhaps solace could be found in a world other than this one. She began to associate with a group of sorcerers and developed her own laughter, albeit dark.

Not only in the community was Joy more widely loved but at home as well. Needless to say, Tragedy's parents found her constant criticisms of their behaviour tedious. Even more so because these criticisms were often true and this was something that they both loathed to see. And so they retalitated by trying to cut her down to size whenever they could.

It may be thought that Joy and Tragedy did not get along, that they despised each other. That Joy felt herself superiour to Tragedy on account of her favoured position in the family and....well....everywhere and that Tragedy was jealous. But this was not so at all. They both knew that they were the only ones really capable of understanding one another. Joy knew that if it weren't for Tragedy that she would be hopelessly, if not irredemably giddy. Tragedy knew that were it not for Joy she might never have learned to smile.

So Tragedy turned a blind eye to all she felt was silly about Joy. And Joy feigned not to notice when Tragedy became so gloomy that flowers drooped when she walked into the room. Indeed, Joy was the only one who could cheer Tragedy up when she reached the depths of her despair, usually daily, around tea-time. And tragedy did her part to prevent Joy from becoming so airy that she nearly floated away.

Finally, as girls tend to do, they grew to be women. And when they did, their tolerance for eccentric behavior, which I promised I would get to, caused them to have many great and terrible adventures, a few of which I shall now relate to you.

Joy in her joyosity, began to spend her time with Gypsy's, circus performers, elves fairies and the like frantically making merry. Those who knew her chuckled indulgently; they did not try to stop her, she was so pretty! But unbeknownst to anyone, not even Tragedy, sometimes she wished someone would try to stop her. Because she sometimes things got out of hand. Like the time she woke up in bed with an ogre she didn't even know. She swore to lay off the mead but at the next party she found she couldn't say no.

Joy having never having had to hide anything before, didn't even recognise what was wrong with herself. She thought she was sick and began taking potions and elixirs in order to heal all the time wearing a brave front, telling no-one her. Everyone loved her so much because she was so happy. Happy was what she was! Without her happiness, cheeriness, helpfulness...she was nothing. And so she pretended but her laughter grew forced and her smile strained.

When she was at her lowest point she wed a handsome shopkeeper who had always admired her. He gave her the control that she had always lacked. Sometimes he used his words, sometimes his fists and sometimes his feet. But he seemed to care about her safety as no-one else ever had before, he kept her in line as she never could do herself. And she felt he saw inside of her as no-one else ever had because he saw that she wasn't as good as people thought she was. She was silly, and foolish and vain and that was the truth!

Tragedy, it goes without saying, had problems of her own. When she finally figured out that most people were scared of her, she tried to tone it down and to emulate Joy as she was so well-loved. But she quickly saw that that wasn't going to work! She could only maintain it for a short while before she glared fiercly at someone or said something cynical or made a sick joke. She had also become quite the sorceress over the years and when angered would sometimes blast pottery into shards with her eyes or make the fire in the hearth flare, ruining whatever had been cooking and filling the cottage with smoke.

So she gave up her futile attempts at Joyness and and left the village to travel and spend her time in places of ill-repute gazing into oracles, seeking more magic and wisdom. She was not afraid of monsters of any sort save the human variety and she eventually grew completely undomesticated.

She drifted from bad crowd to bad crowd and even dated vampires and werewolves and the like. She thought that they were dark and mysterious and had some kind of knowledge that would allow her to understand the wordless urges that she was always struggling with. But she finally found that they were just posers. That instead of using their immortality to learn and to seek wisdom, it only caused them to be even more oblivious than most as they never had to deal with consequences. And she also found that they needed the living in order to feel and would drain all of your vitality if you allowed it. Not being nice like Joy she left and for the first time realized that maybe it wasn't always so bad not to be nice.

Trite though it was, Tragedy began to see that happiness is indeed found within. She also decided that it was okay if no-one understood her as long as she understood herself. And so she decided to go on her biggest adventure of all. She decided to return home and to use her powers to help instead of to hurt.

No-one was really too glad to see her. She had hurled scathing and eerily accurate insults at everyone in the village at least once. They were also rather mistrustful of her sorcery and this made them sullenly polite which had always irritated her before but now she took no mind. She was too busy opening up a shop! She had decided to become the town witch. She had become a first rate sorceress on her travels and felt that she could offer the village a valuable service. She was so busy and focused on her enterprise that she had not yet discerned Joys situation.