Festive banners fluttered above the stalls, their edges curling under the early spring wind. The community fair was in full swing, filling the open park grounds with bursts of laughter, the scent of popcorn, and the jingle of brass tokens dropped into prize buckets. Rows of booths lined the pathways—handcrafted jewelry, old-fashioned ring toss, lemonade stands buzzing with eager children and distracted parents.
Mia stood near the edge of it all, half in shadow beneath a sycamore tree. Her eyes tracked movement, not for pleasure but with intent. She had reviewed the layout earlier, followed setup from a distance, and now scanned every beam, every banner pole, every volunteer with a clipboard.
She was looking for the stall.
A small art display near the east end had been propped up hastily. Its central canopy pole looked uneven from the start, but now a supporting cord flapped loose in the wind.
Sarah was approaching it.
Mia moved.
She weaved through the crowd with practiced fluidity, brushing past a group of teens clutching cotton candy and a man selling handmade wind chimes. She kept her eyes fixed ahead, already calculating distance and speed. The ground was soft with trampled grass. A stroller blocked her path for a moment. She sidestepped.
She passed a ring toss stand where a girl missed three times in a row and burst into giggles. Music floated from a nearby speaker: something upbeat, synthetic, with a slight cassette hiss. A dog barked from somewhere near the food stalls. Every sound pressed against her nerves.
Sarah reached the stall.
The girl looked relaxed, hair in a casual braid, sleeves rolled above her elbows. She smiled at one of the volunteers who handed her a paintbrush. Mia noted every second: the angle of the canopy pole, the moment the tension line snapped free.
Then the wind surged.
It wasn't strong, but it was sudden—a gust that picked up napkins, sent a row of paper flags flapping like wings. Mia felt it hit her face just as she stepped from the crowd.
"Sarah!" she called, loud enough to cut through the chatter.
Sarah turned, startled, stepping back.
The pole crashed down with a metallic thud, knocking over a bucket of paint and sending half the stall's display tumbling. The canvas behind it crumpled like a collapsing lung.
People gasped. A child started crying. Volunteers rushed to the scene.
Sarah stood frozen for a moment, then glanced at Mia.
Mia gave the faintest nod.
Relief washed through her in a wave so strong it nearly buckled her knees. For one terrifying second, she had imagined the pole striking Sarah's shoulder, knocking her down, changing everything. But it hadn't.
Sarah was safe.
One of the volunteers—a tall boy in a neon shirt—lifted the pole with help, propping it against a tree. Someone else fetched a new rope. The spill was cleaned, the canvas reset.
Sarah crouched to pick up spilled brushes, brushing flecks of green paint from her shoe. She muttered something to the girl beside her, who smiled and shook her head.
Mia backed away.
Festive lights flickered on as dusk edged closer. The hum of laughter resumed, stitched with the occasional bark of a prize-wheel announcer. But inside Mia, silence echoed.
Because for all her planning, that had been too close.
She leaned against a nearby tree, one hand flat to the bark. Her breath came too fast.
How many more times could she do this? How many more near-misses would she need to prevent?
She looked down at her journal—the one she carried always. Her fingers flipped instinctively to the most recent log.
Timeline Anomaly: Field Stall #12. Wind-based instability. Sarah proximity within 3ft. Interception successful.
But below that, she scribbled new words without thinking:
Echo Signs Present. Serial Duplication.
She reached into her coat pocket and pulled out two tickets—prize tokens she'd grabbed from the ground in the commotion. She turned them over in her hand. They bore the same serial number. Identical.
An impossible glitch.
The timeline was beginning to echo.
Mia squinted at the tokens again. Same bend at the corner. Same light scratch near the edge. Not just printed the same—identical in wear.
She pocketed them carefully and scanned the crowd again.
Memory fog crept at the edges of her awareness. A detail missing. A sentence she couldn't recall writing.
She opened her notebook again, flipping back two pages. The entry for the laundromat was there. The one for the Watson dinner. But the space between them… her handwriting faded, as if the ink had been left out in the sun.
That wasn't normal.
A cluster of children ran past her, laughing, one trailing streamers. Their path intersected briefly with the same volunteer booth, where Sarah now stood offering cups of rinse water to another girl.
Mia felt something catch in her chest.
This, here, was right. This was the version where Sarah was whole, unbruised, seen. But time didn't like being redirected. It bent, it stretched, it snapped back.
And it was beginning to fray.
She closed the notebook and exhaled slowly.
"Not yet," she whispered.
She would let this moment stand. For now.
She looked up once more at the canopy, now secured with rope and tape. Sarah smiled at someone and pointed toward a new banner to be painted.
And just for a second, Mia let herself smile back.