Protection is any response organised around preventing harm, exposure, loss or overwhelm.
It may look like attack, pleasing, speed, silence, numbness, analysis, withdrawal or control. In the books, protection is treated as intelligence with a history—not as an enemy to defeat.
The question is whether the protective move fits the present and whether choice can arrive before it becomes automatic.
Different from: safety. Protection is a response. Safety is the condition or felt information the response is trying to secure.
Related: Adaptation; Safety; The Time Loop; Agency.
