The twins Wister were exactly alike. They spoke the same, they walked the same, and dressed the same; they even shared the same name: Wister. They were like one person.
But cruel Fate loathed the boys, for no mortal was to share the exact life as another. So looking down from her lofty seat, Fate stretched out her invisible, inexorable hand, and drove the twins Wister apart. Cast from their home to sojourn in the freezing dark, they wandered separately, each crying out his lament and wishing for his brother.
But even Fate could not truly sever the bond of those boys. For they both traveled to foreign lands, they both rose to positions of high regard, and when each became a man, the Lord Chancellors Wister each married the daughter of his king and ascended to their thrones after the old men’s deaths.
But Fate, cruel Fate, in all her brooding hate stretched out her unseen, unstoppable hand, and drove the twins Wister together again through a terrible war. The armies raged yet neither brother could best his kin so that at last the kings, knowing not whom the other man was, came together, alone, to finish the war man to man. Alas! They wore all-covering helmets so that neither could perceive his brother and they came together with a mighty crash and each cut the other down. Then, when each king had called his son to remove his mask, he looked and beheld his lost twin for the last time. At this, Fate laughed in her lofty seat.
But yet she was foiled. The sons of the kings, seeing what was done, swore an oath of friendship everlasting, for they perceived that they were each the other’s kin. And each prince was truly a twin himself, for they both had royal sisters, formed in the same womb. And so the princes each married the princesses and Fate, in her lofty seat, laughed in wretched defeat.
