Universe's most endearing tyrants.

Meanwhile, inside the house, Shafaq sat on the couch trying to soothe her toddler, who was giving her an incredibly hard time, as usual. She had been trying to change her daughter’s nightclothes, but dressing a toddler required the same precision, patience, and stamina as defusing a ticking bomb. Every tug at the sleeve, every failed attempt to slide an arm through, felt like a second lost on an invisible timer. One wrong move—a sock too tight, a button too slow—and the calm could detonate into a full-blown tantrum. The child wriggled, giggled, screamed, then went limp in protest, her tiny body a battlefield of shifting resistance. In that moment, the mother was not merely dressing her daughter; she was negotiating with chaos, pleading for mercy from a creature that neither reasoned nor yielded.

Young children are the universe's most endearing tyrants, whose unpredictable rule you can not even protest against. Rulers who didn't choose to have that authority. Their reign begins the moment they open their eyes, commanding attention with nothing more than a whimper. You cannot argue with them, reason with them, or walk away from their demands, because their tyranny is laced with innocence. It isn’t power they seek, but presence—the assurance that you will bend your world around their needs. And so you do, not out of fear, but out of a strange, loyalty that only a parent could understand.

An excerpt from the Short story A Ruined Piece of Paper

Iqra Mangi.