Sisters of Westfall, Part 1: Reunion

Sisters of Westfall

The Jansen Stead, Westfall

Bright blue and white light flashed as a circular portal ripped a hole through space and time, the shimmering image of the streets of the faraway floating city of Dalaran sparkling from within. Anna Jansen wrung her hands nervously, watching the magic from a safe distance away as the portal appeared in the middle of the cornfield, scaring away a couple of the crows and flattening a few stalks of corn.

With a final white flash of light, a figure emerged from the portal as it collapsed in on itself. In its place, in resplendent purple and white flowing robes trimmed with gold, holding a staff with an icy blue crystal atop, stood her older sister, Elsa. Anna's breath caught in her throat as she stared at her sister's ethereal beauty. Flawless alabaster skin, golden hair, and curves in all the right places under her mage armor made Anna blush, her cheeks heated.

Elsa opened her eyes, got her bearings, and broke out into a huge grin as she spotted her sister across the small cornfield. "Anna!" she shouted, jogging across the field, sunlight sparkling off her.

Anna ran forward to embrace her sister… and fell flat on her ass, her nose and chest covered in small ice crystals. "What the…?"

"Oh! Oh, I'm so sorry, Anna," Elsa apologized, weaving her fingers into a complex shape, the sparkling light around her fading. "I always put up ice armor before going through a portal. Can never be too careful. Sorry," she smiled sheepishly, offering her hand.

"Don't worry about it," Anna grinned, brushing straw off her tunic and pants with one hand. Elsa's fingers felt cool and dry in her hand; she grimaced internally as she compared the soft, smooth skin of Elsa's palm to the rough callouses of her own hands, hardened from her soldier's training in the Westfall Brigade. "Mama! Elsa's home!" she shouted over her shoulder.

From inside the small farmhouse emerged their mother, Iduna Jansen. Once one of the fairest maidens in Westfall, hard times during the Second and Third Wars, combined with the loss of her husband Agnar had taken their toll, though she was still a stunning woman. Her brown hair had streaks of grey through it, and face had more crow's feet and wrinkles in the past few years, but they were of both laughter and tears in equal measure. Iduna wiped her hands on a towel slung over her shoulder as she walked out of the famrhouse. "Elsa! Welcome home!"

Elsa ran to the door and embraced her mother tightly, savoring the scents and sights of home. She'd been away almost four years, studying her magic in Dalaran with the greatest mages of Azeroth in the Order of the Kirin Tor, and though young, she showed great promise, particularly in the frost magics. "Mama! It's so good to see you, you and Anna. How have you been?"

"It's been good here. Quiet. Anna's been training hard with the Westfall Brigade, and she's almost ready to stand for her knighthood," Iduna said proudly, pulling Anna into a hug and tousling her auburn hair.

"Mama, stop!" Anna grinned, dodging Iduna's playful parenting.

"Otherwise, pretty much the same old thing. We had a dry year, so the corn isn't as tall as I wanted it to be, but we'll still have a good enough crop," Iduna continued, straightening her dark blue dress. "At least we're better off than the Saldeans. They had a pack of wild boars rampage through their fields and destroyed half their harvest. Thank goodness Anna was home from training, or they would have destroyed ours too."

Anna smirked as she walked around to the side of the stone and thatched straw farmhouse, showing Elsa three large boar carcasses in the small clay smoking hut. "You'll have to take some of the now-famous Jansen wild boar bacon back with you to Dalaran, Elsa."

Elsa looked carefully at the boars. "Did… how did you bring down this many boars all at once, Anna? These are full-fledged goretusks!" She looked more closely and saw obvious gouges in the flesh where a sword had bitten into the monstrous creatures.

"They're really strong, but also really, really dumb, Elsa," she grinned. "When one of them charges you, you bash it in the face with your shield and yell really loud, and that not only disorients it, it confuses the others. I just started running them through afterwards, and before you know it, I had a year's worth of bacon for us."

Iduna patted Anna on the shoulder. "I was still terrified they'd gore you like they did to poor Verna Furlbrow. She's still recuperating in Stormwind. Thank goodness the army has been training you so well."

The women walked into the farmhouse, Elsa looking around to see what had changed since she'd last visited. Despite being a mage and being capable of opening portals, she was still junior enough in the ranks of the Kirin Tor that she had to ask permission first before traveling by magic. As a result, she'd only been home a couple of times in the past few years, mostly for holidays like Winter Veil.

She looked with nostalgia and sadness at the portrait hanging over the fireplace. Just before the Third War, Agnar had commissioned a painter from Goldshire to visit their home and create a family portrait. Everyone looked so young; Agnar with his blue Stormwind tabard draped over his army Knight-Captain's dress uniform, Iduna in a beautiful purple robe fit for a queen, with Elsa and Anna as gangly kids posing awkwardly. Elsa had been 13 at the time, Anna 10, and they had no idea that would be the last time they'd see their father alive.

Anna sidled up to her sister, putting an arm around her waist. "I miss him too," she said softly, resting her head on her sister's shoulder.

"I can't believe it's been 10 years already," Elsa murmured. She turned her head, listening as their mother started putting together a meal in the kitchen as she put an arm around her sister's waist. "How have you been, Anna? Really, I mean. Your last letters sounded like you were pretty worn out."

"Better now that you're here," Anna said, snuggling into Elsa's neck. "I missed you so much. I didn't think it'd be this hard, having you away for so long." She turned and pressed her lips against Elsa's, kneading them softly and giggling a little as she felt Elsa's tongue gently poking into her mouth.

"I missed you too, baby sister," Elsa smiled, gently bopping Anna on the nose as they finished kissing. "Once I'm no longer an apprentice and I'm a full adept, I can come home a lot more often. I won't have to ask permission to leave Dalaran."

"And you can take me places, right?" Anna needled mischievously. "You can open up a portal and we can go interesting places, try new restaurants. I hear there are some amazing barbecues in Ironforge! Oh, oh, you could take me to Brewfest! I've always wanted to go, but it's such a long trip to Khaz Modan and we can't afford the Deeprun Tram."

Elsa shook her head and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Yes, I'm studying the depths of magic and the arcane arts so we can find new places to eat," she grumbled good-naturedly. "That's definitely what Malygos had in mind for us to be doing with the powers of the arcane when he brought magic into this world."

"Hey, you stinker. It's the least you can do to make up for being away from me for so long!" Anna gave her sister a playful shove, forcing her to sit on the small couch in the sitting room before squeezing in next to her.

"So… tell me about you, Anna. You're looking… well," Elsa said, a pink glow suffusing her cheeks as she took one of Anna's hands. "You're to stand for knighthood soon?"

Anna nodded vigorously. "Knight-Captain Danuvin says I'm just about ready. I've been training for what, close to 4 years now? Just a little less than you've been in Dalaran. I've passed the physical tests, so all that I have to do now is some of the paperwork and I'll receive my commission."

"Papa would be so proud of you," Elsa murmured, looking at the painting over the fireplace again. "You've really followed in his footsteps. Pretty soon you'll be a Knight-Captain yourself." She gently rubbed her fingers over the callouses on Anna's hands, noting a few small scars, presumably from her military drills.

"You think so? Would he still be proud if he knew about… us?" Anna asked quietly, holding Elsa's hands firmly.

Elsa stared at the smiling family in the portrait at length. "I… I think so. He always wanted us to be happy and safe. And no one will keep me safer than my own knight in shining armor," she smiled, pulling Anna into a tight hug.

"Girls! Supper's ready," Iduna called from the kitchen. The smell of goretusk liver pie and Westfall stew wafted through the farmhouse, causing Anna to drool a little. The family sat down at the heavy wooden table, digging into the meal Iduna had put together.

Elsa signed happily. "Nothing beats home-cooked food, Mama. The food is Dalaran is good, but yours is still the best," she grinned as Iduna blushed.

"This is great, Mama," exclaimed Anna as she tore through spoonful after spoonful of the stew. "Did you use some of the goretusk in this?"

Iduna smiled. "Yes, after you dealt with those beasts, we had plenty to work with. I hadn't planned on a big meal this week… money's a little tight," she bowed her head slightly. "But fortune and your sword favored us, so I figured I'd make one of your favorites."

"Mama, is everything all right?" Elsa looked at her mother, concerned.

"Y-yes, everything's fine, Elsa. Nothing to worry about." Iduna wouldn't meet her daughter's eyes, looking down at her stew with a furrowed brow.

"Mama…" Elsa intoned, giving her a long look.

"I- it's been hard, Elsa. The last few years have been harder than normal. I didn't want to say anything, because I know you'd feed guilty about your studies and you wouldn't stay - and it's so important that you work hard for your own future. Besides, Anna's home more often than not, so it's not as lonely as I thought. It's just… hard keeping up the farm by myself." Iduna looked sadly into the sitting room, silently mourning Agnar's absence. She cleared her throat. "But enough of your old mother being silly. It's so wonderful to have you home for a little while."

Elsa clasped her mother's hand gently over the table. "I told Anna before, once I'm an adept, I won't need to ask permission to leave Dalaran. Once that happens, any time you need me, send word and I'll be here in literally a blink of an eye, all right?"

Iduna silently squeezed Elsa's hand and nodded before clearing her throat. "Now, umm, let's finish our dinner. I apologize, I didn't have anything made for dessert."

Elsa grinned. "Let me take care of that." She wove her fingers and chanted a short spell, reaching into the arcane, and in seconds a plate of magical cinnamon rolls appeared on the table.

"Holy shit, you can conjure desserts?" Anna exclaimed, squealing with glee as she stared at the plate, sniffing it like a hound. "It… it smells so real! What else can you make?"

"Umm… it is real, Anna. And I can make cupcakes, strudels, puddings, cakes, pies, brownies, lollipops-"

"What about chocolate? Can you conjure chocolate? How much could you conjure?"

Elsa looked up to the ceiling as she mentally sorted the spells in her spellbook. "Umm… if we can, I haven't learned that one yet, though I think the brownies contain arcane chocolate?"

"If you weren't already my favorite person in the world, you would be now, sis," Anna said as she hoarded three cinnamon rolls on her plate, much to Iduna and Elsa's amusement. "Once you make adept, I expect you to teleport me cookies and brownies every weekend, sister mine." She dug into the desserts with glee.


Author's Notes

Sisters of Westfall was stuck as an idea forever, something I discussed with Fishycoffee back in 2020 and the vagaries of World of Warcraft's crazy timeline almost made this story not happen. It took me a week to figure out exactly what happened when, and despite the fact that it's been 17 calendar years since World of Warcraft was released, in-game it's something like 10-12 years.

Thankfully, Elsanna Week 2021 came along and the 7 prompts Glittering Snowfall put together just felt… right. Like the chapter headings of a multi-part fic, so that's how Sisters of Westfall happened. Enjoy!

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The Usual Disclaimer

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