Writer’s Prompt: The Calm That Hunts: When Patience Becomes Power

Writer’s Prompt

Terri Lambeau learned early that strength wasn’t about noise. It was about balance, discipline, and knowing when not to strike.

Her father made sure of that.

He put her in Kung Fu when she was eight—before she could properly braid her hair or tell the difference between fear and excitement. He sat on hard wooden benches during endless practices, clapped the loudest at belt ceremonies, and never missed a match. When Terri won nationals at seventeen, he wept openly. He said it was the proudest day of his life.

Now she stood silently as his casket was lowered into the earth.

Her father hadn’t died in a dojo or behind locked doors. He had been shot while delivering donated clothes and canned goods to families in a neglected part of town. Wrong place. Wrong moment. No suspects. No urgency. Just another headline that faded within days.

Justice, she realized, moved far too slowly when it mattered most.

Back at the dojo, the master teacher’s voice echoed in her memory. He often quoted Lao Tzu, especially one line Terri had once dismissed as philosophical fluff: “At the center of your being you have the answer; you know who you are and you know what you want.”

Now she understood it.

Terri didn’t want chaos. She didn’t want rage. She didn’t want to make the same mistake as the man who pulled the trigger.

What she wanted was justice—earned patiently, deliberately.

She began training differently. Slower. Sharper. She studied patterns instead of opponents. She listened more than she spoke. Like the tide rolling in, her movements were subtle, almost invisible, yet unstoppable.

Somewhere in the city, someone believed they had gotten away with something.

Terri smiled for the first time since the funeral.

The water was still muddy.

But it was settling.

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Writer’s Question

How will Terri’s patience shape the kind of justice she delivers—and what moral line might she refuse to cross?