**The Alchemy of Arrival**

Barcelona, 09:03 AM

The olive tree is draped in Polilla’s latest art installation—strands of silk spun between branches, catching the November light like suspended highways. My suitcase sits unpacked by the door, still dusted with Atlantic salt. Lina is at her wheel, elbows deep in clay, but she keeps glancing at me over her shoulder, as if checking to see if I’ve truly landed.

Polilla flutters onto my keyboard. “¿Extrañaste?” Did you miss?

I don’t answer immediately. The old Sofia would’ve reflexively said sí, then buried herself in editing photos to avoid the weight of homecoming. The new Sofia notices how the morning light fractures differently here—not the sharp gold of the Azores, but a honeyed diffusion through our smudged windows. How Lina’s unfinished mug of manzanilla leaves a ring on the draft of her article that’s identical to the stain on my notes from three months ago.

The Atlantic project files are open on my screen, but my fingers keep straying to a new folder: Raíces. Roots. It holds unexpected things—the photo of Polilla mid-sneeze, a voice memo of Lina arguing with a malfunctioning kiln, the sound of our neighbor’s sardana rehearsal drifting through the courtyard at dusk. The old Sofia documented places. The new Sofia is learning to document presence.

Lina’s hands still on the clay. “Te fuiste una periodista. Regresaste… ¿qué?” You left a journalist. Returned… what?

I spin my chair to face her. The answer isn’t simple. The Atlantic pieces are good—solid journalism infused with the lessons of obstacles-as-curriculum—but the real story lives in my ribs: how I woke twice last week reaching for Lina’s warmth, how Polilla’s wings make the same sound as Lisbon’s trams at dawn, how I caught myself explaining Barcelona’s Gothic Quarter to a fisherman in Horta as if it were my birthright.

Polilla crawls onto my wrist. “¿Cambio?” Change?

Outside, the castellers are rebuilding their human towers after yesterday’s festival. Their muscles remember the old patterns, but their laughter suggests they’ve invented something new. The old Sofia measured growth in passport stamps. The new Sofia traces the callus on her thumb—half from camera triggers, half from Lina’s pottery tools pressed into her palm during goodbyes—and understands: transformation isn’t about distance, but integration.

Lina wipes clay onto my jeans, her version of a welcome home. “Dime,” she demands. Tell me.

So I do. Not about the cliffs of São Miguel or the whales off Pico, but about the moment in Terceira when I realized the longing in my chest wasn’t for the next horizon, but for the weight of her head on my shoulder during our terrible movie nights.

Polilla sneezes confetti. “¿Entonces ya no eres nómada?” So you’re not a nomad anymore?

Lina answers for me, her fingers leaving deliberate prints on my skin. “Ella es de donde elige estar.” She belongs where she chooses to be.

And I’m finally learning: arrival isn’t the opposite of departure—it’s the alchemy that happens when you stop dividing your heart between here and there, and let it beat fully in one place at a time.

—Sofia