To go back to you

Golden Beach, 1998

The salty wind carried the laughter of two children running barefoot across the wet sand, chasing the waves as they timidly retreated before returning to embrace the shore. Eight-year-old Daniela Morales had her brown hair pulled back in two messy pigtails that danced to the rhythm of her steps, while Mateo Vega, just a few months older, followed her with a smile that filled his freckled face.

“Dani, wait for me!” Mateo shouted, carrying a blue plastic bucket full of shells he hadfound that morning.

“You’re very slow, Teo!” she replied, stopping only long enough for him to catch up, likealways did.

Golden Beach stretched like a perfect crescent moon in front of the small coastal town where they had both been born. Pastel-colored houses lined the seawall like toy soldiers, and the white lighthouse at the tip of the cliff watched the horizon with its blind eye during the day, promising light for sailors when night fell.

It was the last day of summer vacation, though neither of them knew it at the time. The adults kept certain secrets, certain decisions that would change everything, but at that moment there was only the golden eternity of August, the taste of vanilla ice cream melting faster than they could eat.lick it, and the feeling that summers would last forever.

“Look what I found,” Daniela whispered, bringing her closed hand up to Mateo’s ear. “Can you hear?”

Mateo stood very still, pretending to concentrate intensely as she opened her palm toreveal a small, perfect shell, with pearly spirals that sparkled in the sun.

“The sea!” he exclaimed, continuing the game they had perfected all summer. “It’ssinging a song.

“It’s our song,” Daniela said with the seriousness that only children can bring to truly important matters. “When we grow up, every time we hear the sea in a conch shell, we’ll remember this summer.”

Mateo nodded solemnly and extended his own closed fist. When he opened it, he revealed a conch shell.almost identical, as if the ocean had conspired to give them a perfect pair.

“Promise of shells,” he said, inventing the tradition on the spot.

“Shell promise,” she repeated, touching her shell against his with a soft clink.They sat on the sand, legs crossed, shells pressed against their ears,

listening to the eternal whisper of the sea. Behind him, the town was slowly waking up from its siesta. DonFernando opened his small ice cream shop, Mrs. Carmen watered the bougainvilleas that overflowed from her balcony, and the fishermen began preparing their nets for the night’s work.

“Do you think we’ll still be friends when we’re old?” Daniela asked, lowering her shell and looking at Mateo with those big, serious eyes that made him feel like he was the most important person in the world.

“Of course,” he replied without hesitation. “We’re going to live in houses next to each other, and our childrenThey are going to play together on this very beach.

—What if we had to go far away?

Mateo frowned, as if the idea was physically painful.

—Impossible. This is our place. Here are our shells, our secrets, our beacon. Nowe could live nowhere else.

Daniela smiled, reassured by the absolute certainty in her best friend’s voice. She lay back on the sand,using his arm as a pillow, and Mateo did the same beside him. The clouds formed whimsical figures in the sky: a pirate ship, a friendly dragon, a house with a smoking chimney.

“Look,” Daniela pointed out, “that cloud looks like a giant snail.”

“Or like the roof of our secret castle,” Mateo suggested, referring to the small cave they had discovered among the rocks of the cliff, their private refuge where they kept found treasures: stones with strange shapes, special shells, and the notebook where Daniela wrote stories and Mateo drew the characters.

“When we grow up, we’re going to build a real house up there,” she said, pointing towardthe cliff—. With large windows to see the sea and a garden full of flowers.

“And a workshop where I can make my inventions,” added Mateo, who at eight years old already showed afascination with taking apart and putting back together anything that has gears.

—What kind of inventions?

—I don’t know... things to make life easier. Like a machine so the shells don’t break.never, or something so that best friends never part.

Daniela propped herself up on one elbow to look at him.

—There’s no need to make that up, Teo. Best friends don’t separate. It’s a law of nature, likethat the sun rises in the east and the waves always return to the shore.

At that moment, Daniela’s mother’s voice floated in from the seawall, calling her to dinner.The day was beginning to turn orange and pink, heralding the end of another perfect day.

“I’m coming, Mom!” Daniela shouted, but she didn’t move.

“You should go,” Mateo said, although he didn’t make any attempt to get up either.

“Five more minutes,” she asked. “I want to see if the dolphins show up.”

It was their ritual every evening. Just before sunset, sometimes a family of dolphins would jump nearthe shore, as if bidding farewell to the day. They didn’t always appear, but hope kept them vigilant every evening.

“There,” Matthew whispered suddenly, pointing toward the water.

A bright gray fin cut across the surface of the sea, followed by another, and then another. The dolphinsThey jumped in perfect arcs, as if dancing especially for them.

“You saw them!” Daniela exclaimed, clapping. “It’s good luck to see dolphins on the last day of vacation.”

—Who said that?

—Me, right now. But it’s true, I feel it here. —He touched his chest, right over his heart.

Mateo watched her with that mixture of admiration and tenderness he would feel for her throughout his life, although at that moment he only knew that Daniela made everything seem possible, that the world was bigger and more magical.

“Daniela Morales! Right now!” Her mother’s voice grew more insistent.

This time, Daniela jumped up, brushing the sand off the yellow dress she had worn that morning because Mateo had said it was the color of the sun. He followed her, carefully picking up both shells.

“Here,” he said, handing her his. “So you don’t forget our promise.”

“As if I could forget it,” she replied, closing her fingers around the shell. “See you.”tomorrow to plan the construction of the castle on the rocks.

“See you tomorrow,” he confirmed.

Daniela ran home, her pigtails flying like flags in the wind. Halfway there sheHe stopped and turned around.

“Teo!” he shouted. “A promise of shells!”

“A promise of shells!” he replied, raising his shell in the air.

Mateo stayed on the beach until he saw her disappear through the door of her house, a two-story building painted sky blue with white shutters. Then he walked slowly toward his own, a smaller coral-pink house, where his grandmother Carmen was waiting for him with dinner ready and a thousand questions about his day.

That night, each in their own rooms, they pressed their seashells to their ears before going to sleep, listening to the whisper of the sea that promised them endless days of adventure, laughter, and eternal friendship.

They didn’t know that the adults had already made decisions that would separate them. They didn’t know that the job of theDaniela’s father would take them to the capital before the new school year began. They didn’t know it would be fifteen years before they would see each other again, fifteen years in which the shells would be all that remained of that golden summer.

They didn’t know that love, like the tides, sometimes recedes only to return stronger.

But at that moment, on that perfect August night in 1998, they only knew that they were inseparable, thatTheir friendship was eternal, and the shells would forever keep the echo of their childhood promises.

The lighthouse began its nightly dance, sending beams of light sweeping across the sea like the arms of a giant embrace. And somewhere between the two children’s dreams, the future waited patiently, weaving the threads of a story that was just beginning.

Because some promises, like songs of the sea, are meant to be fulfilled, even if it takes years.in finding their way back to shore.