Alina Lopez All The Time In The World ((new)) • Latest & Plus

She smiled. Not the quick, polite smile she gave to strangers in elevators. A real one. Slow and unguarded.

She stood on the edge of the vast salt flat, the white crust crackling under her boots like the first step onto a frozen sea. The sky wasn't above her; it was around her, a pale, infinite dome of blue that mirrored the ground so perfectly the horizon had dissolved. She was no longer a person standing on a planet. She was a small, warm smudge in the middle of an equation. alina lopez all the time in the world

And for the first time, she knew exactly what to do with it. She smiled

Here, the irony melted.

Nothing. And everything.

She didn't check her watch. She didn't plan her next move. She walked until the car was a speck, then until it disappeared. She sat down cross-legged in the middle of nowhere and watched a single cloud take twenty minutes to dissolve. She listened to her own breath as if it were a language she was only now learning to speak. Slow and unguarded