As soon as I got home, I started writing a letter to Father God—of course, I knew there were more convenient ways to communicate between the God Realm and Shadow City. Using Ding Dang's temple—that was, the God Realm's embassy in the Empire—as a relay, I could dial extension 100100, transfer to the operator, connect to Channel A voice prompts, then press 2 to contact Father God directly, provided he happened to be home. But for non-urgent matters, we actually preferred leaving each other notes. This had originally been Father God's habit. He often had Viska bring me one or two little scraps torn from Cindyia's or Jia Di's homework books as greetings, and then I got infected by the habit...
Anyway, I would not be leaving for several days, so I might as well write a letter.
Little Pao Pao was doing homework on the coffee table nearby. She was, after all, a student at the Imperial Military Academy now. Although she haunted every grade and class and wandered around at random, she had still learned a few things—for instance, that she needed to do homework after school, and that she needed to carve over twenty thousand "morning" characters into the outer wall of the preschool building. All right, the girl had obviously misunderstood something in class, but at least she had remembered the part about "doing homework." Watching my precious daughter diligently sprawled over the coffee table filled me with fatherly pride. This was probably a father's greatest moment of accomplishment. Little Pao Pao held her pen in a less-than-standard grip, muttering as she scribbled and drew. I could not help leaning closer to see what she was writing, and one glance nearly moved me to tears: the first half of her exercise book was filled with little