This isn't weird.

Kathy

Millie was on a beach.

It took her a while to figure this out. She was on her back, and couldn't quite muster the energy to turn over or sit up, so for an undetermined amount of time, she was only aware of the sky directly above her eyes. It was overcast, but what light did filter through the clouds had a gentle quality that suggested early morning.

She was damp. This sensation also took some effort to identify. Ultimately, it was her hair plastered against her face that gave it away. The stray tendril stuck inside her mouth tasted salty. Very salty. From there, she extrapolated that the deafening roar filling her ears was, in fact, the sound of crashing waves. Yes, this was a beach. Definitely a beach.

How the fuck had she ended up here?

For all the water soaking her hair and clothes, she was miserably dehydrated. Her mouth was dry. Her head hurt. She wanted to go home.

Where was home?

The effort of pushing herself up buried her fingers in wet, cold sand. Oh, she was cold. That was sort of nice. She'd been somewhere hellishly hot for such a long time. She tried to picture it, but saw only an orangey haze. Was that home? She hoped not. She didn't want to be somewhere hellishly hot again. But she wanted to go home.

Sitting up confirmed her suspicions. In front of her, dark crests of water were thrusting themselves toward the shore, where they exploded into white foam and receded right back into the ocean, over and over. It was hypnotic to behold, and almost certainly something that only happened on a beach. The water was too far away to touch her, but judging by the soggy state of her dress, her hair, and the ground beneath her, that hadn't always been the case. Maybe she had washed ashore. That sort of thing happened sometimes.

Movement in the corner of her eye drew her attention, and after a moment thinking about it, she remembered how to turn her head. There was a girl next to her, eyes closed, combing her fingers through the sand. A teenager. No, a woman. Something in between. She had preternaturally shiny, white-gold hair, slung forward over her shoulders in a damp twist that reached all the way past her waist. They were wearing matching peasant dresses, hers pale blue, Millie's pale green. Maybe they were sisters. Millie was pretty sure she had a sister.

Now the girl-woman's eyes opened, and she sat up, too. She stared out at the waves for a few seconds, or a few minutes, or somewhere in between, then she turned toward Millie and smiled. Millie struggled to make out her face. All of the correct pieces were there, but she couldn't figure out the correct order in which to observe each one to form them into a cohesive whole. Faces are slippery like that, Millie thought, and looked instead at the faint halo of yellow light that traced along the perimeter of the girl-woman's silhouette.

"Isn't it beautiful, Kathy?" the girl-woman said.

It took a moment for Millie to figure out which part of the question was confusing to her. "I'm not Kathy," she said. "You're Kathy."

The girl-woman laughed. Her face made slightly more sense when she laughed. "No, you're Kathy. I'm Kathleen."

"That doesn't sound right," said Kathy, furrowing her brow. "Have I always been Kathy?"

"I don't think we're always anything," Kathleen replied.

"I want to go home," Kathy said.

"Bummer," Kathleen replied.

"I'm thirsty," Kathy said.

"Me too," Kathleen replied. "Come on." She took Kathy's hand and helped her to her feet. She was tall and graceful and surefooted, which was a very good thing, because Kathy needed a lot of help. Her feet were clumsy and decidedly unsure. The sand confused her toes. She was fairly certain now that they weren't sisters, but she sort of wished they were. She liked Kathleen. They walked away from the water, and soon the sand became dry and loose, which only confused her feet further. She had to look down to make sure each step made a successful landing on the ground.