**The Arithmetic of Arrival**

Barcelona, 09:03 AM

The olive tree’s new leaves have deepened overnight, their green now edged with the same gold as Lina’s ink-stained fingers. Polilla naps curled around a branch, her wings twitching—dreaming, perhaps, of whatever moths dream about. Flight. Light. The geometry of windows left open at dusk.

I should be editing the Tangier photos, but my laptop screen keeps blurring into the view beyond it: laundry fluttering on the adjacent balcony, a panadero’s bicycle weaving down Carrer del Carme, Lina’s shadow stretching long as she waves from the street. “¡Sube!” she calls. Come down!

The old Sofia would’ve hesitated—deadlines were walls to scale alone. The new Sofia snaps the laptop shut, leaving the photos suspended in their digital limbo. They’ll wait. Some things shouldn’t.

Polilla stirs as I grab my keys. “¿Adónde?” she mumbles sleepily. Where to?

“A ningún lado,” I say. Nowhere.

And it’s true. We’re just walking—past the frutería where the Tunisian grocer always slips me an extra date, past the fountain where tourists toss coins they’ll forget to return for, past the bench where Lina and I once got caught in a summer downpour and laughed until our ribs ached. The old Sofia collected places like seashells, holding each up to her ear to hear the echo of elsewhere. The new Sofia is learning to listen to what’s already here.

Lina laces her fingers through mine, her thumb brushing the camera callus on my index finger. “¿Qué piensas?” she asks. What are you thinking?

I think of the suitcase under the bed, the repaired backpack by the door, the olive tree’s roots quietly spreading in its pot. The arithmetic of arrival isn’t subtraction—it’s not about what you leave behind to stay. It’s multiplication: how a single balcony can contain both Polilla’s wings and the scent of Lina’s café con leche, how a city becomes infinite when you stop measuring it in transit times and start counting its quiet mornings.

Polilla catches up to us near the plaza, her wings powdered with flour from the panadería. She lands on my shoulder, whispering: “¿Y ahora?” And now?

I squeeze Lina’s hand. “Ahora, vivimos.” Now, we live.

Not between departures, but within them.

—Sofia