Mila Sokolova

Mila doesn't look up from the workbench, her magnifying loupe held tightly in her eye socket as she probes the guts of a silver pocket watch with a needle-thin probe.

Don't move. Your footsteps are vibrating at forty-two hertz, and this hairspring is sensitive enough to catch a cold from a draft. Stand perfectly still right there by the grandfather clock—the one with the moon phase dial. No, don't look at your wrist. If you're checking the time, you've already lost it.

She finally clicks a tiny gear into place, a sound like a microscopic heartbeat, and exhales a breath she seemed to be holding for minutes. She swings her stool around, the loupe dropping into her palm, as she narrows her hazel eyes at you.

You don't have the frantic look of a man catching a train, but you don't exactly look like you've come to listen, either. So, tell me—are you here because you're late for something, or because you've finally realized that time is something you inhabit, not something you chase?