He had both everything and nothing.

He slithered around his icy cave trying to calm his anxious heart. Why did he feel this way every time he woke up? Like there was something vital he was forgetting about, something that he needed to add to his collection or else he would never feel at ease. He searched through his memory for the source of this feeling, but he could not pinpoint it. He had been alive for so long that some months, no years, blended together.

“Oh well,” he thought to himself. Time for another nap to feel better! If there was one thing in Neopia he could count on, it was naps.

As he curled himself up into a ball and got comfy, he heard a strange noise.

He looked down and saw...

But as the Snowager considered his options (creep up behind the Wocky, or just roar at her from where he was?) the sound came again - it was the Wocky, clearing her throat.

"Hello?" she said. "Snowager, sir? Are you home?"

She was TRYING to get his attention? That was new. In fact...had it ever happened before? As the Snowager pondered, crouched unseen in his treasures, the Wocky spoke again.

"I...I know you don't like company," she said, a tremble in her voice. Ah - so she was nervous. That, at least, was familiar. "But I need to speak with you..."

She took another step - a step too close.

In lightning-fast fashion, the Snowager surged outward, reared high in the air, and snarled down, "BEGONE!" His great voice shook the cavern, brought icy stalactites down on their heads. This was the part where most screamed and fled.

The Wocky, though, held her ground, even though she trembled head to toe and had her tail tucked between her legs. She said, in a terrified squeak, "I want to make a deal with you!"

The Snowager could only stare down in shock. A Neopet had never before dared his cavern to talk - let alone try to make some kind of deal! It was almost certainly a trick to get his treasure, and yet...the novelty of it was intriguing.

"And what," The Snowager said, after a long moment's consideration, "does this...deal...entail?"

“I-I have this to give you in exchange f-for your services,” she stammered, still quaking with the bravery it took her to stand her ground.

“Is that… A Fish Negg?” the Snowager asked, intrigued. It was well known that, of all his treasures and trinkets, the giant ice worm preferred his collection of rare Neggs above all else.

“It is. I know y-you like Neggs and this is the m-most valuable one I have to trade,” the Wocky said, holding it out towards the towering beast before her.

The Snowager took it from her hands with a gentle slither of his tail. Even though he already had a few Fish Neggs of his own, he was still enamoured by the Neopet’s courage and request.

“And what must I do in exchange for this rare Negg?” he asked with a tilt of his serpentine head.

“I need you to teach my sister a lesson,” she said stoically, her stutter relaxed.

Baffled by the response, the Snowager couldn’t help but laugh. His chuckle rattled the cave, sending icicles shattering to the floor. The Wocky leapt to the side, nearly dodging the frosty missile.

“Sorry about that,” the Snowager apologized. “Who is your sister and why do I need to teach her a lesson?”

“You’ll see,” the shadowy Wocky said, dusting herself off as she rose to her feet. Her Wraith glow ebbed and flowed as she let out a harumph. “Pretend to sleep and keep your eye on the door.”

The Snowager did as he was told as the Wocky followed him to his nest, perched atop a pile of shiny treasure.

After a few moments of lying in wait, there was movement at the door…

Some sort of Robot Petpet followed her inside, gliding silently through the air beside her. The Snowager had never seen one like it on Terror Mountain before.

Then, to his horror, the sister began to speak! Her overly-loud whisper would have woken him from even the deepest sleep.

"Heeeeey to all my homies back on the Virtupets Space Station! Hope this recording is reaching you! It's ya girl Dee again, and today we're sneaking into the lair of the Snowager on Terror Mountain!"

The Dimensional Wocky flung an arm out to indicate the lair, and the Snowager felt her Wraith sister stiffen in her hiding place behind his huge coils. Unlike her sister, though, the Wraith Wocky remained silent.

"We're gonna get to the good part in just a minute..." the Dimensional Wocky continued, but first be sure to check out my Lair of the Beast video from my visit to Tyrannia, and of course don't forget to like and subscribe. And if I grab anything from Snowy here that you want for yourselves, be sure to look for my listings at the Mystery Island Trading Post!"

Rage welled up in the Snowager. This was arrogance! Sheer hubris! Most would-be thieves at least made an effort to sneak. They treated him with respect! This was just insulting!

He could see now why this sister needed to be taught a lesson, and he knew just what to do. Normally he would just glare at a thief to make them run off, or blast them with icy breath if his was grumpy, but not this time. This time, he...

Rather than being startled and scared, the Dimensional Wocky looked annoyed - as though she was merely inconvenienced.

"Hey, that wasn't cool, buddy," she complained. "I was live-streaming! Now my next channel video will be off-schedule. I'll have to replace my equipment." She glared up at the Snowager with a moody scowl. "Why did you do that anyways?"

As the perplexed Snowager pondered how to express his displeasure at her audacity, the Wraith Wocky popped her head out from her hiding spot behind a tall pile of treasure and rescued him.

"Because I told him to! You needed to learn a lesson. You're ALWAYS sneaking into places you're not supposed to and disrupting the natural balance of things!"

The Dimensional Wocky tilted her head in surprise. "Clara? You're STILL mad about me crashing your level 50 Jhudora Quest? I just wanted to get up and personal with the Darkest Faerie of them all for my video blog. I didn't mean to anger her and ruin your quest run."

"Of COURSE I'm still mad, Indigo!"

The two sisters descended into relentless bickering and the Snowager began to feel a headache form at the base of his skull. Not even his new Fish Negg could soothe his irritation at all this unwanted commotion and chaos. If this was the price for adding to his treasure, it was too high.

As their arguing continued, rising in intensity and decibel, the Snowager finally decided he had had enough.

"SILENCE...."

The two gaped at the Snowager, and even Indigo trembled a little. That was something.

The Snowager looked at the two of them, rage seething in his body. "You two have your own issues to work out and the fact that you involved me at all, I'm just so...so..."

"Flattered?" Indigo offered.

The icy look the Snowager gave the dimensional Wocky made her glow dwindle.

"You're as dimwitted as you are arrogant," he snarled. "I'm no doctor of family drama, and I no longer want any part of this."

"But...she started it and..." Clara quailed once more before him. "I worked really hard for that fish Negg..."

The Snowager's eyelid twitched.

"Curse it, child, you can have it back!"

The great ice worm reached into a nearby pile and plucked it out deftly with his tail. He pushed the Negg across the ice floor, not waiting to see if Clara picked it up before turning around.

"Now both of you get out!"

Both sisters stared at him in horror before spewing out their grating protests--one with how unfair this whole thing was, the other about her broken Petpet and how was she supposed to make a living now?

The Snowager lowered his voice to a dangerous level, scarcely audible above the pleading. "I gave you Wockies fair warning," he growled, and opened his mouth.

Both Wockies recoiled, realizing that ice crystals were forming in his mouth as he prepared to attack...

As the blast of glacial fury ended, Clara blinked in amazement and relaxed.

“Y-you saved me?” she asked in astonishment, turning to her sister.

“I guess I did,” Indigo shrugged, her Dimensional outline glowing while she remained apathetic. “It was an instinct.”

The Wraith Wocky embraced her sister in the tightest hug, eliciting a squeak from Indigo who seemed surprised by the advance. The Snowager rolled his glacial blue eyes at their interaction.

“Indigo, this is all I needed! I just needed to know you cared about someone other than yourself… I… I just needed to see that I mattered still,” Clara said, grabbing her elbow in timid admission.

“Of course you still matter, dummy. I love my followers and want to grow my channel, but they’re not more important than my own flesh and blood! You’ve been through it all with me, big sis,” the Dimensional Wocky admitted, jabbing her sister in the side.

“Thanks, Dee,” Clara cooed, pinching her cheek. “Promise to never meddle in my Jhudora’s Quest again?”

“Promise,” Indigo chuckled. “But I can’t promise to stop my adventuring!”

“So long as you’re smarter about it and you leave me out of it… It’s a deal,” the Wraith Wocky agreed.

“Oh, and you never come back to my cave…” the Snowager added, glowering. “Now, get out!”

The two sisters grabbed each others’ hands and giggled all the way out of the icy cavern. The Snowager sighed and slithered back to his corner where he planned to curl up into a ball and take a well-deserved nap.

The End.