She'll be SUPER careful, promise.

And he didn't say his name but she can describe him. And secret running sounds fun!

"That sounds like Lan Qiren." 

"Who's he?"

"My uncle. He teaches older students." 

"Is he always no fun?"

"Yes." 

"Awww."

"He is very strict. Be especially careful about not being caught breaking rules if he is present." 

"So I gotta trick him really hard?"

"Yes. If necessary. It is probably better to avoid him." 

"Okay. Why?"

"He hated your other father." 

"...Oh." She pouts. "But... No one knows?"

"No one knows. But you are very like your other father, and even if the truth doesn't occur to my uncle, if he realizes how like your father you are he may come to dislike you over it, and make your life more difficult."

"Oh." She thinks very hard about this. "...That's mean."

"Yes." 

He carefully tugs her in to his arms to hug her. 

Hug!!!

"Being mean should be forbidden," she grumps.

"It is difficult to say what is mean well enough to forbid it." 

"Huh." She puzzles over this for a bit. Being mean seems like a pretty obvious kind of thing to her.

Cuddle cuddle. "I love you. I will do everything I can to protect you. Whether it is from broken legs or mean great-uncles." 

Cuddles! "I wanna protect you too."

"I am glad. But right now you are still learning almost everything. If you focus on learning now, you'll be better able to protect people when you're older and more skilled." 

Hmmmmm. That is disappointingly logical.

He strives not to be disappointing in any other way. 

Her teachers continue to be satisfied with her progress in reading and to badger her into please at least be legible in her handwriting even if she can't manage presentable. She advances in her tiny child martial arts/phys ed classes. They begin to instruct the children in meditation. 

Her handwriting remains absolutely artistically terrible, unless she's writing stories for daddy.

She likes meditating! She likes it best if she's also moving, or if she's staring at something interesting, or if she's listening to music, or if she's balancing somewhere weird, but it's fun in general. Her head gets floaty whenever she manages to get all the crowding out of it. (She has a lot of thoughts, usually, all tripping over each other. They're all neat thoughts but they make her head very heavy.)