A crow kills an owl in daylight. The same owl kills the same crow after dark. Nothing about the two birds has changed — not their claws, not their cunning, not their hatred. What changed is the hour. Valluvar opens this chapter with that image and never lets go of its logic: strength is not a fixed quantity. It is a function of when you deploy it. The ten kurals that follow are not a meditation on patience — they are a manual for the coiled spring. Wait like the heron. Burn inwardly while smiling outwardly. Carry your enemy on your head if you must. And when the moment arrives — rare, unmistakable, already leaving — strike before it passes. The chapter's deepest claim is not that timing helps. It is that timing is the only thing that separates conquest from catastrophe, and that the discipline required to wait is harder, and rarer, than the courage required to fight.