Chapter Text
Certain parts of the camp structures remain in place, year after year and season after season. It's less of a hassle to unearth and defrost them than it would be to drag them all over the place when transporting them would likely have more risk of breaking them than is remotely worthwhile, and the Pearl Clan has the resources to leave the frames behind. Enough cold weather preserves wood better than it would be preserved in, say, the Crimson Mirelands that the Diamond Clan calls home in varying locations over the seasons, and there is no shortage of cold weather in the Alabaster Icelands. Cynthia's reasonably certain that the vast majority of the Icelands, if not the entirety of the Icelands, falls under the general metaphorical umbrella of permafrost.
With that said, it also means that there is less to pack overall than there likely was for the Diamond Clan—though, considering that she wasn't allowed to be involved with the packing for the Diamond Clan, she can't actually be sure of that one herself. It does seem like it's done sooner than the Diamond Clan's was, possibly, which is something.
It also means that, sooner than Cynthia expected, she finds herself involved with the second clan-wide festival in the span of two days. She's lucky that she was able to take a nap before the Pearl Clan’s packing began in earnest, or else she would have to worry far more about sleep deprivation.
(As it is... she has something approaching a functional sleep schedule, these days, even if stumbling into it was somewhat unwilling on her part. Cynthia would prefer to keep it, if such a thing's possible, once she gets home. Assuming that she doesn't end up dealing with some kind of temporal jet lag, or something, which she wouldn't even be surprised by at this point—never mind that nothing of the sort actually happened when she got here, as far as she knows. Which is far less than she'd like.)
Though she's sure that there are some intricacies that are entirely different from the Diamond Clan's celebration, Cynthia isn't here as an anthropologist right now. Hypothetically, she very much could be, and maybe if she hadn't been stuck here for quite as long as she had been stuck here she would be more willing to write her own observations down. As it is... as the situation, her situation, currently stands... she's too tired to write down observations or anything. Besides, the clans are more than capable of writing things down themselves if they want it to become public knowledge.
Maybe the clans of the future hating her is something she could never have prevented, but that doesn't mean she's going to just accept that outcome as something predetermined. And even if it is... even if it is, there's no reason for her to do anything that might make things even worse in the future.
Unfortunately that reasoning also leads to her doing almost nothing at all when the party actually starts, something that leads to her ending up in the company of the Pearl Clan's youngest warden and the woman who will soon be the Pearl Clan's newest warden. Lian and Ingo's soon-to-be successor, Mille.
Neither of them seem all that bothered by much. Though Cynthia can't help but notice that there's no sign of Lian's Pokémon. And that—that's something she can ask about. She knows how Pokémon work. Probably significantly better than she knows how people work, whether that's in this time or her own.
(His Goomy... no, his Sliggoo, she recalls. His Goomy evolved into a form of Sliggoo she'd never seen before, and hadn't had very long to look at. The last time she'd seen Lian at all was when the sky had broken open and Distortion spilled out all over Hisui. She hadn't seen him for very long, then, for obvious reasons. She'd just been exiled from Jubilife, and hoped that maybe—just maybe—one or both of the clans might be willing to help her. Lian himself had been, but for all that he could easily be tied with Sabi for youngest warden, he knew he couldn't act alone or else he might have brought Kamado's wrath down on his entire clan.)
(She couldn't blame him. She wouldn't have even if he had been able to do anything beyond apologize, direct her to Mai, and try to hold things together as best as he could when the world felt like it was ending.)
In the end, though Cynthia knows Pokémon well, asking about them in a way that won't risk making a huge social mistake is... something that's still easier said than done. Particularly when Cynthia's managed to beat back the crushing knowledge that she'll never see any of these people again at least to some extent, only for the knowledge that their descendants might hate her for reasons she can really only guess at to return to haunt her instead.
(She never usually overthinks conversations to this extent. This is not actually an improvement over moping about the fact that almost all of these goodbyes will be very, very permanent.)
"Hey," Mille asks casually before Cynthia can, "where's your Goomy?"
"Oh! Well, er," Lian looks a little embarrassed. "He evolved, y'see. And I'm real proud of him for it, too, but he's bigger and he's got this big metal shell he retreats into, too. But he got cold real easy before he evolved, and he could hide in my hat back then. Now... he really can't. I can deal with the cold up here at camp, but I'm not forcing him into it. He can keep an eye on Lord Kleavor. Or two, whenever he can spare 'em."
Oh. Yeah. Okay, you know what, that would absolutely do it. Dragon-types like Goomy and Sliggoo aren't ever particularly fond of the cold, generally, and while she's pretty sure that the Hisuian forms of Sliggoo and Goodra are Steel-types and therefore would technically do great against Ice-types in a fight, there's a big difference between a fight and just general cold weather. Metal, for instance—like the shell that Lian's Sliggoo has, now—gets really, really cold.
"That makes sense," Cynthia says. "I was... wondering, a little, too."
"Yeah, don't you worry, he's fine," Lian says. "And so am I! I... do miss him though. And how small he used to be. I think he does too. But just 'cause I've got to be here, doesn't mean he's got to be here, y'know? And he can hold down things with Lord Kleavor. Though I'm hoping we won't get any more lightning from the sky for a while."
"Hopefully not ever," she agrees, with a glance up.
The space-time rift is gone, now, at last, but she's willing to bet that if someone were to fly close enough they'd still find scattered remnants and aftereffects left behind. There's a reason that air travel is restricted in the area immediately surrounding Coronet. Well, actually, there are several reasons that air travel is restricted in the area near that particular mountain, including but not limited to there being some very strong wind currents that the average Flying-type is unprepared for at best and can't handle at worst as well as the general unreliability of modern technology anywhere close by, but that's something Cynthia can add to the already extensive list of preexisting reasons.
"Hopefully not ever," Mille agrees too. "Lady Sneasler's intimidating enough without her turning gold and trying to murder anything nearby that moves. Not that her being intimidating isn't a cool and interesting thing, but there's a limit of intimidating, you know?"
Lian nods. "Lord Kleavor's still the best and the coolest and the strongest! But he was a little scary, even to me, back when he was frenzied. So it's... really good that he's not. Anymore. But if either of our nobles did get frenzied again—"
He looks to Cynthia, briefly, then freezes. "...I guess we can't ask you for help once you've left Hisui, if it happens again."
"No, sorry," Cynthia says. "But there are other people who know how to quell frenzies if it ever happens again. Who aren't going home. Because home isn't—home is still Hisui, for them."
It's not not Hisui, for her, but she can't, won't, really doesn't want to get into semantics about that right now. Especially not when talking with a pair of wardens consisting of a ten-year-old and an older teenager who, even being some of the youngest people she knows in Hisui, won't be around anymore when the Hisui of now becomes the Sinnoh she knows and loves. Even after her discussion with Ingo, she's still struck with the fact of how much this will hurt.
So she makes her excuses to bid her goodbyes to the pair of them sooner rather than later—it'll be more final for Lian than it will for Mille, because she's accompanying the warden she'll be succeeding back to the Coronet Highlands one last time and Cynthia will be accompanying them both. Before she leaves, Cynthia, for her part, steadfastly resists the urge to suggest that a Pokéball might solve the problem of his Sliggoo being too cold to come with him to the Alabaster Icelands. Partially because, as far as she's aware, the clans' general level of trust in Pokéballs hasn't exactly changed. Partially because she doesn't have any of the newer, more comfortable ones to actually offer.
...And partially because the older Pokéballs carved from apricorns might not even actually be able to solve the problem.