"I know Doctor Alice says he was a figment of my disturbed brain...but Dottie, sometimes I feel as if he is spying on me!" "Tell ya what, Prissypants. I killed me two witches - leastways, that's what I remember - so if this little varmint shows up on my spread, I will have no problem whatsoever kickin' his ass from here to the Rio Grande..." *** Sorry, Pete...they're not having sex. This is actually a deep sororal relationship (albeit one that often skirts, and regularly crosses the line into Sapphic territory). What has been fun for me, writing about them in Adventures of The Lost Girls, is that Dorothy Gale and Wendy Darling shouldn't even know each other. Even were they to meet, they have nothing in common in terms of culture, education, activities (although they both love horseback riding and ultimately, having adventures). And yet, when I imagined a scenario in which they do meet (as patients under the treatment of one Dr. Alice Liddell-Dodgson, an expert in childhood delusional psychoses), they wound up developing a bond beyond sisterhood (but not to the point that they don't greatly appreciate the men in their lives - both eventually wind up married, after all). To be honest, I do not know why and how this this relationship works, except that they suffered from similar delusional psychoses (or were they?) as girls, and they share the same fundamental values. Both are free-spirited and open-minded (Wendy from having read Emma Goldman and Dorothy from a lifetime of watching farm animals). Both are young adults, rebelling against the values of their parents' generation (in Dorothy's case, Uncle Henry and Aunt Em). And both of them have a taste for the exotic. Dorothy and Wendy are also coming of age in a tumultuous time of war and social and political upheaval.