Alina Lopez had all the time in the world.
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
The world, Alina Lopez had learned, was not a place that gave you time. It demanded it, siphoned it in small, insistent sips: a ringing phone, a flashing notification, the low hum of a car engine idling in traffic. Time was the currency of obligation, and she had been spending it freely on things that did not spend it back on her. Alina Lopez had all the time in the world
A strange, unfamiliar feeling began to pool in her chest. It wasn't happiness, exactly—happiness was too sharp, too event-driven. This was softer. Deeper. It was the quiet, radical peace of sufficiency. Of being exactly where she was supposed to be, not because of a deadline or a duty, but because she had chosen to be nowhere else. She was no longer a person standing on a planet
She had always moved fast. High school, college, the first job, the promotion, the better apartment, the trip that was supposed to feel like freedom but felt like a checklist. She was a blur of efficiency, an expert at the urgent, a stranger to the essential. "All the time in the world" was a cliché she used ironically while rushing out the door.
