My Purpose

She looks almost sad, almost mournful, as she lets me come to my revelation. Acknowledging it only slightly before setting her hands in her lap and speaking once more.

"You are not wrong," she says, "You do have a purpose. You have many purposes, as do many people. Lives like an interwoven tapestry where the end result is-"

"Save it," I say bluntly, cutting her off, "I'm tired and I suspect this dream does not come with a whole lot of rest. So save the flowery wording and just tell me what I'm here to do."

"You're here to fix it," she says quickly, a twitch at the corner of her mouth showing her frustration, "Here to fix them."

I remember mistakes. Errors. Words said too quickly that spoke too much and couldn't be pulled back and consequences. Pulling away and stepping too close and shutting them all out in the end of it.

I remember letting people down.

I remember what happens when I do.

The Baba Yaga remembers too, reads it on my face when I am lost in my own memories and she breaks me out of it by shaking my head and telling me, "No. All of them. Each of them. A thousand different paths and each one a ripple.

"You are a central stitch in the fabric of reality. Everyone is that stitch, to a degree, but you became more of one when you made the choice to go back like this. You altered so much that you took on more than just..."

For a moment her voice gets thick with regret and sorrow for me and then she coughs to clear it and tells me.

"I'm sorry. I didn't want to tell you. The pressure can be... too much for some."

Baba Yaga looks up into my eyes and reads my soul and what she sees in it steels her resolve, "But not for you, I suspect."

"I don't know what you're talking about," I tell her, but she already knows that.

"Emily you are a lynchpin. You are a central stitch. You are at the middle of everything but you can unravel and rewrite all of it. You can fix it for them."

"For who?" I ask.

"For all of them," she tells me, "For everyone you know and knew. For everyone you encountered. For everyone you left a measure of yourself on, some impression, you can rewrite their future and make it better."

My shock must be clearly written on my face. She addresses it bluntly.

"What? Did you think you were the only one with regrets? Did you think that Rachel was happy? Blake? Lucas? Eddie? Did you think when they walked out of your lives they lived a fairytale existence? No. Life is not kind like that or at least it is only kind like that to a select few.

"They endured pain and hardship. They traveled down paths they learned to regret and they did things that hung on their shoulders like those metaphorical chains that you felt in that glimpse of your old baggage. They, like you, bear the scars and sorrows of a lifetime.

"They did. But when you went back you did not only break your own chains you broke theirs as well.

"They do not have to have that regret. They do not have to make the same mistakes. By coming back into this life you have already seen to it that they will not, not in the same way at least.

"Your path has changed but theirs has too. Ripples running out from the moment you stepped in and everything is different now. Everything can be better for all of you, if you choose it.

"My dear, your very existence in this timeline has changed things for them, ensuring they will not be who they were before."

My heart is buoyed by that news, perhaps the only good news I'd received all day.

"Now," she says, "They have all new mistakes to make."

That is the other shoe though. That was the fact I was waiting for.

"So they will make mistakes," I say.

"Everyone makes mistakes," she points out, "But mistakes don't always have to be fatal errors."

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