The two girls embraced at the middle of the bridge.  This was their first meeting in years.  It was full of tears, but words were absent.  Neither needed them to know what the other was saying.  They were sisters.  And sisters understood each other.

They had been separated by marriage.  To stop war in the kingdoms, they had each been given to a king, in the hopes that each sister could convince her husband to keep the peace.  So far, they had been successful, but not without a price.  Neither could pass the other’s borders.

A river formed the boundary, and it was too dangerous and too wide to cross or even enter.  The two sisters had spent the last twenty years secretly working on a bridge over it, so that they might be able to see each other again.  As they released their holds on each other, the elder sister handed the younger sister a board.  It was the final piece of the bridge, and they laid it in together.  Then they both stood on it, and once again they embraced.
The younger sister cried again, harder this time, for she knew what she had to do.  Trembling, she raised her knife behind her sister’s back.  She had to do this, for her husband, for the one she had learned to love.  She had to kill her sister.

As the elder sister rubbed the younger sister’s hair, the younger sister plunged the knife in.  Then she pulled away, only to see the look of hurt on the face that was identical to hers.  Tears came to both of their eyes, but still the elder sister did not yell.  “Sister, I know why you did this, and I do not blame you.  You have always been the one thing in my life I could truly love.  All I ask is that you remember me when I am gone, and that you live as long as a woman of our family should.”  And with that the elder sister died.

The younger sister held her twin in her arms, and wept.  Then she pulled the knife out and plunged it into her own heart.

The next day, the two kings both arrived at the bridge at the same time.  Upon seeing their lovers dead, they vowed vengeance.  Both taking their brides, they buried each far away from the sisters’ meeting place.  However, what they did not know was that they had taken the wrong girl.  Each queen was buried on the wrong king’s land.

The restless spirits strolled in each other’s kingdom for the rest of that year.  On the day they had both fallen, they met once again.  They embraced and promised each other that they would meet there every year.

It has now been many years since the two sisters met on that bridge, and many years since they met their ends.  Now the bridge is long gone, and only the spirits remain.  Still, on that one cold night every year, they come to the edge of the river.  They can do no more than wave, but they do not care.  For they will always be sisters, and they will always be friends.