Solaceon Town had the particular quality of a place that had never decided to become anything in particular, and had turned out perfectly fine for it.
There was no founding moment, no deliberate plan. People had drifted here, and Pokémon had followed, and gradually the town had assembled itself around them — ranches enclosed by wooden fences, paths worn smooth by years of use, the whole place carrying the easy, unhurried atmosphere of somewhere that had never been in a rush. Most residents ran their ranches or offered Day Care services to Trainers passing through who needed their Pokémon looked after between journeys.
Steven and Cynthia arrived late in the morning.
Solaceon Town sat a comfortable distance from Celestic Town — close enough to reach without much effort, which meant they had made reasonable time despite the unhurried walk through the outskirts of town.
"It's nearly noon," Steven said, checking the time on his Pokégear. "Your grandmother should be heading back from the ruins for lunch around now."
At his words, Cynthia became aware — quite suddenly — that she was still holding his hand. She released it with slightly more composure than she actually felt, straightening up and looking at the fenceline.
"I haven't quite worked out how to tell her yet," she said.
"That's all right." Steven looked at her profile — the slight furrow in her brow, the way she was looking at her own hand without quite meaning to. "There's no deadline. Tell her when you're ready."
"Mm."
She tucked her hand into her coat pocket and fell into step beside him.
"The Solaceon Ruins are east of town," Steven said. "Your grandmother will likely pass through on her way back. We could walk around for a while and wait."
"That works."
The path they were following ran along the outer edge of a cluster of ranches, the wooden fences stretching out on both sides. Steven rested one hand on the top rail of the nearest fence and looked out at the paddock.
The air here had a quality he'd noticed before in smaller towns — cleaner than the city, less weighted. He took a few slow, deliberate breaths and couldn't entirely convince himself it was imagined.
A pair of Tauros crossed the grass at a rolling trot. Further back, a Miltank was lying in a patch of sunlight with no apparent interest in doing anything else. A Snubbull trotted along the fence line with the self-important energy of something that considered itself responsible for the whole operation, and somewhere in the far corner of the paddock, a Rhyhorn was standing very still in the manner of an animal that had decided to be a rock for the afternoon.
"Yo! Isn't that my Cynthia — and Steven!"
They both turned.
Carolina was coming up the path from the direction of the ruins, moving at her usual unhurried pace, hands clasped behind her back. Beside her was a young woman — short-haired, neat, with an attentive expression.
Both of them were looking over with warm, faintly amused expressions.
"Grandma!"
Cynthia moved forward immediately, and any pretence of dignified Champion composure dissolved the moment she reached Carolina— she stepped straight into the older woman's arms the way she clearly had since she was small, and Carolina accepted this without any surprise whatsoever.
"Goodness me," Carolina said warmly, patting her back, "my Sinnoh Champion is still the same little girl."
"Who said Champions can't hug their grandmothers?" Cynthia said into her shoulder.
"No one. I'm not complaining." Carolina chuckled and gently released her, turning to the young woman beside her. "Let me introduce you. This is Philiece — my research assistant. She was the one who tracked me down at the last dig site to tell me you'd made the semifinals."
Philiece gave a small, polite bow. "Hello, Champion Cynthia. It's a pleasure to meet you."
"Please, just Cynthia." Cynthia waved a hand quickly. "Champion sounds very strange coming from people my own age."
Steven had followed a few paces behind, and now stepped forward with an easy smile. "Hello, Philiece. I'm Steven."
Philiece turned to him. Her expression remained composed, but there was a brief pause before she responded. "Champion Steven. It's an honour."
"Steven is fine," he said pleasantly. "No ceremony needed."
Carolina looked between the two of them with the satisfied expression of someone who had already formed several opinions and was keeping them to herself for now.
"Well then," she said, turning to continue down the path, "I hope you're prepared to earn your lunch, Steven — because I've already told Philiece you'd be cooking."
Philiece's composure slipped, just slightly, into something that looked very much like barely contained delight. "Is that true? Really?"
"I've been known to cook, yes," Steven said.
Cynthia bumped his arm with her elbow from the other side. He noticed. He said nothing.
The house Carolina had been using was small and well-kept, the kind of place that came furnished with everything needed and nothing extra. While Carolina and Philiece spread their notes across the sitting room table and resumed the discussion they had presumably been having since morning, Cynthia declared she was going to help with lunch and followed Steven into the kitchen.
Her definition of helping turned out to be somewhat interpretive.
"Would you stop—" Steven said, not looking up from the pan.
"I'm not doing anything," Cynthia said, from approximately two centimetres behind him.
"You've poked me four times."
"I'm just standing here."
He turned the heat down slightly and blocked his left side with his free elbow. Cynthia relocated to his right. He blocked that too.
"This is genuinely not safe near a hot pan," he said.
"Your cooking is good enough that one distraction won't ruin it."
"That is not the point." He moved the pan off the heat briefly and turned around to face her at full height. She looked back at him with an expression of complete innocence that neither of them believed. "If I burn this, you're the one who doesn't get to eat it."
Cynthia went quiet for exactly two seconds.
Then she put both hands on his shoulders, rested her chin on her hands, and said with extraordinary pathos: "You wouldn't do that to me."
"..."
"Would you?"
He turned back to the stove.
"No," he said. "I would not."
"Mm." She settled her chin back on her hands with an air of total vindication. "I thought so."
Steven accepted his situation with the equanimity of someone who had identified the losing position early and decided it wasn't worth contesting.
Lunch turned out well regardless.
Philiece tried the first bite at Carolina's insistence and immediately looked as though something in her understanding of the world had been quietly revised.
"That's..." she paused. "That's very good."
Steven released a breath he hadn't entirely been aware of holding. He glanced at Cynthia, who at least had the grace to look mildly apologetic rather than merely smug.
She immediately picked up the serving chopsticks and loaded Carolina's bowl.
"Grandma, eat while it's hot!"
"Yes, yes. Sit down, everyone."
The meal was quiet and easy — the kind that settles into comfortable conversation without anyone needing to direct it. Philiece was reserved at first, but gradually relaxed as the food improved the general mood, which it tends to do. Carolina kept the conversation moving with the practiced ease of someone who spent most of her time with graduate students and Pokémon researchers and had therefore developed deep reserves of patience for social lulls.
Afterward, Carolina and Philiece gathered their things and began the walk back toward the ruins. Cynthia had come specifically to help, so the direction of the afternoon was settled. Steven had no particular reason to stay behind.
"Steven," Carolina called over her shoulder as they walked, "do you know anything about ruins work?"
"I know enough," Steven replied, keeping pace with Cynthia slightly behind her grandmother. He had recalled Metagross that morning — and Metagross, in its months of self-directed study, had worked through a reasonable stack of archaeological texts. The knowledge had filtered through in their usual way. It wasn't the same as field experience, but it was a foundation.
He stepped neatly to the side as Cynthia reached for his hand, which she then caught easily.
Carolina watched this without turning around fully, and smiled at the path ahead.
"Then you can stick with Cynthia," she said.
Cynthia lifted her chin.
The Solaceon Ruins announced themselves before they quite came into view.
Something about the air changed first — heavier, older, carrying the particular quality of a place that had been standing for a very long time and was completely indifferent to the current century. Then the structure itself appeared: enormous, assembled from dressed stone, the craftsmanship of it precise in a way that spoke less to tools than to time and care.
At the base of the wide stone steps, two large statues stood on either side of the entrance.
Steven slowed.
One was quadrupedal, its form armoured and commanding, a circular disc fitted at its neck — Dialga, the Legendary Pokémon associated with the governing of time.
The other stood upright, its body curved and spatial, trailing an impression of dimension that the stone somehow preserved — Palkia, the Legendary Pokémon said to preside over space.
Steven looked at them for a long moment.
His expression didn't change, exactly — but something in it did.
He wasn't entirely certain which of the two was responsible. Possibly both. But his mother's disappearance had not been a random accident, and it had not been unexplainable, and those two facts had led him, by way of years of careful study, to the same conclusion every time.
He looked away.
At the base of one statue, he noticed text carved into the stone — small, precise symbols running in a horizontal line just above the foundation.
He crouched down.
"Life... encounter..."
The script was Unown. He could pick out shapes he recognised — he'd taught himself the basics years ago from reference texts, the way you pick up fragments of a language you know you'll eventually need. He couldn't read it fluently. Two or three words was the extent of it.
"You can read ancient script?" Cynthia stared at him.
"A little. A few words." He stood up. "What does the rest say?"
She leaned forward, hands braced on her knees, reading it with the ease of someone who had spent years surrounded by exactly this kind of material.
"All life will encounter other life, and new things will be born from that meeting."
Steven was quiet for a moment.
"Did you understand it?" Cynthia tilted her head. She had just read it aloud. That was usually how understanding worked.
Carolina and Philiece, a few steps up, had both turned at the exchange.
"I'm not sure," Steven said. He looked at the inscription again. "But I think what it's pointing at—"
He paused.
"Bonds," he said.