Brother Moon hit the ground outside the church and rolled through a garden bed, flattening a row of young cabbages before he stopped against a stone wall.
He lay there for a moment, looking up at the smoky sky.
Then he sat up.
His jaw ached, and there was a small cut on his cheek from the stained glass. He touched it with two fingers and looked at the blood. Calm, as always. But behind the calm, he was thinking very hard.
The girl had barely touched him. He had felt the punch land, and it had been nothing, the kind of tap a child gives another child in a schoolyard. Then, a heartbeat later, the full weight of a real blow had arrived out of nowhere and thrown him through a window.
He had spent his whole life learning how force moved. He knew how it traveled through an arm, how it landed, and how to make it stop. And he had never seen force wait before.
Glass crunched on the path.
