The water rolled softly up and down the sandy beaches as I sank my feet into the soft sand. I raised my arms high over my head, sniffing the fresh sea breeze. This was a beach on an Earth similar yet somehow different from mine and the sight of it left me with a sense of awe.
I had gotten here through a portal technology that a version of myself existing in this universe had developed. After meeting at an interdimensional conference where we were both speakers, she kindly invited me to spend my summer with her at her beach house. I could hardly believe that there could be such a thing as inter-universe travel in the first place, not to mention that it happened frequently enough that people needed these conferences!
I asked Summer, my host because I did not want to confuse her with another Summer, whether such visits are common at this institution and she told me they are. Different we were in the ways of getting around and the laws of physics between our worlds but she claimed our ethereal selves vibrate at the same level. It was as if there was an instant chemistry between us.
This world’s ocean was a deeper teal than what I was used to and as I wiggled my bare feet further into the lilac-tinted sand, I realized just how different things could be. The water had a faint sweet smell, and the gentle moments when waves broke at my feet. A crab that looked more like an extraterrestrial with five legs crawled into a small hole and I couldn’t help but chuckle at how absurd this world was.
I was sunbathing naked on the deck of Summer’s beach house, drying off after a swim, when I heard a voice I knew well call out behind me.
“Hey, can I join you on that hammock?”
I turned around and just burst out laughing when I saw my best friend Megan drop herself onto the netted hammock. She had a perfect platinum pixie cut instead of her usual gorgeous, wavy ginger hair; she wore some kind of metallic swimsuit I wouldn’t expect to see on an athletic girl’s body that did not belong to the Megan I knew. There were only minor changes; the periwinkle eyes glinting with glitter and the joyous smile that no longer faded away.
“Megan?? How are you here?” I exclaimed.
That Megan part, if that exists in this universe, laughed nonchalantly. “Summer told me that you have come here and for what reason did you think that my girl would visit another parallel world without me?”
We talked for hours counting the ways we were the same and the ways we were different in our worlds, lives, and selves. She could not believe that the other me had a husband and kids and photos on my phone of them while I marveled at her anti-gravity personal aircraft which she used to commute back home.
But our friendship remained as solid, and as carefree as the one I had always valued with Megan. The realities could have been different but our souls were entwined in every world, every existence.
One evening, we lit up a campfire on the shore and used peculiar star-shaped marshmallows at the ends of fancy skewers that Summer created from thin air. We giggled louder with each of the ridiculous episodes from our previous lives in different realms. We have all heard the saying that some things never change and while traveling through the multiverse, making memories with your best friend over a campfire in the middle of the night is one of them.
I breathed out with content, feeling the warm Hawaiian sand beneath my feet and the presence of dear friends as something precious that fate has granted me. Adventure brings awe, but belonging brings comfort in the unknown.
