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. alina lopez 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. The world, Alina Lopez had learned, was not