She knelt. The wind of her descent flattened mountains. With one finger—gentle as a mother brushing a hair from a child’s cheek—she nudged their flagship into a spin. Not destruction. Disorientation.
“Grow,” she said.
The bullies fired everything. Beams that had unzipped planets skittered off her skin like rain off a cathedral dome. She breathed in. Their missiles turned to dandelion seeds. She breathed out. Their armor rusted into kindness.
And below, the small world exhaled for the first time in eons, because the bullies were gone—not punished, but promoted. Forced to ascend into something they had never tried: listening.
