What about the true soul?

“Who ever got it in their heads that we have to die?” Rani had asked.

For a moment, I thought that I wouldn't know her, and she wouldn't know me, after this night. The pure joy of love burned up in the fire. Was that possible? I shivered, and stumbled to one knee. The universe and its infinite pathways... I remembered that you could follow one track and end up in a different reality from the friend you started with, with a different friend, or a variant of that person, or a variant of you (sure, all of them you, but what about the true soul, on which path did it go?).   It frightened me deeply, and I didn't know how to voice it.

The next day the sun seemed overly bright and I put sunglasses on, hiking up to her small nook and tent beneath the cedar trees.

"Rani," I said quietly.

 A shift from within the tent, and she sat up and unzipped the door. I crouched, as she half-squinted and stretched the sleep fuzziness away.

"I'm leaving," I said.

She looked at me, not saying anything, and then smiled and reached and tugged the sunglasses off of my eyes. She laughed, and grew quiet. Her brown eyes kept contact with mine, unwavering. I didn't say anything either, grateful she'd reminded me to trust, astonished and amazed by her action of revealing me to myself.

"I'll see you," she said, and hugged me. Once more we looked at each other before I inched away from her tent and stood.

"Love you," she said, through the tent fabric.

"I love you, too," and I left, hurrying to catch up with Roy, who I knew needed to get home.

On the ride with Roy, he took the curves too fast, making me cringe near each deep ditch that fell down the side of the mountain.  He needed the edginess, I knew.  He was afraid not to feel.  I pondered Rani’s thoughts about fear and love, love being the purest thing in the universe, fear its mirror.  Fear is kept in the stomach, where it burns as fire that rises into the heart, where there is love. When love consumes the flame, one is made whole, fear absent.

She'd taken the dark glasses from eyes.  My belly still churned, tight, uneasy with the thought that we've got a soul sometimes, but no one has one non-stop, for keeps.  Or do we?  If I could trust what was in her eyes, maybe I could.