For the first time in a long while, Latias was experiencing the town at ground level. Michael wished to see the generous old lady who had visited a couple days prior, and wanted to take Latias to meet her. Latias saw no reason to decline, provided they didn't go into much detail about her; years before she had walked the town with Clayton somewhat regularly. They had reached the town by his small inflatable boat, a new experience Latias found that she enjoyed. In the heart of town, with the noontime throng of people, Latias was enjoying herself a little less. The past few days convinced her that her disguise still worked well, but she still found herself occasionally wishing she could just become invisible and fly above it all. The oppressive noise of human commotion bombarded her from all quarters. In a strange way, though, Latias had missed the experience.

Though she expected to have to show him around, Michael had taken the lead from the beginning and guided them through the busy streets of town, consulting some handheld device. They quickly left the main streets, walking down the quieter backroads to their destination near the edge of the main part of town. People could be seen with their pokémon here, walking side-by-side down the sidewalks or playing in parks or yards. Latias found it strange Michael decided to keep his pokémon home; every other trainer she had come across kept their pokémon in pokéballs with them as they traveled, and on the island away from the main town it was a common sight to see trainer-owned pokémon everywhere. Some people even said it was a necessity, with how much of the island was still populated by wild pokémon that sometimes roamed into sparsely-populated areas.

The 'café on Tide Street' that was their destination turned out to be the simply named Tide Street Café, a small affair that occupied the bottom floor of a building that appeared to have been at one point simply a large house. Its sparse tables were packed with the lunchtime throng, and a lone woman about Michael's age staffed the counter.

"I was told to ask for Nola, about the house on the northeast end?" Michael asked her after they approached the counter.

The woman's eyes flicked between him and Latias' human disguise. "She told me you'd be showing up. Follow me, please."

She brought the two around to a door set into the back wall, which opened to reveal a narrow staircase to the second floor. As the two humans ascended before her, Latias wondered why they had to make some of their hallways so cramped. She bright her wings all the way up to make as narrow a profile as she maneuvered up the stairs behind them. They were shown to a library where they found Nola sitting behind a desk. The younger woman quickly excused herself and went back downstairs, leaving the three alone.

"I knew you'd stop by," Nola said, standing from behind the desk and walking around it to greet them. "No need for introductions, I already know your name. And look who you've brought! There's a face I haven't seen in a long time, and it hasn't aged a bit." Nola stepped close to Latias and looked her illusion over, while Latias kept herself from flinching as best she could. She hadn't expected anyone to recognize her after all this time.

Michael put voice to similar thoughts, "you two know each other? She's the one who'd been living there before I showed up."

"Has to do with the house you're in, actually. Figures she's the one." Nola waved them to a couple chairs side-by-side before a curtained window, and took a seat of her own across a coffee table from them. The pair obliged as Nola reached over her shoulder and slipped a book out from a shelf behind her. "Clayton Georges, the man who we knew lived there last – he's been gone about ten years now – was often seen with her walking around town. He always said she was a great-niece of his, but wouldn't you know, when we looked for next-of-kin after he died, we found neither his niece nor nephew ever had kids!" She squinted at Latias then, "so, just what are you?" Michael looked at Latias, who manipulated her illusion to make a slashing motion with her hand across her throat at him, a gesture she was taught to mean 'stop'. Nola laughed at this, "A decade dead and he's still keeping secrets from us."

"So how'd he die?" Michael asked

Nola looked to Latias, who just looked down at the floor. "Sorry dear," then looking back to Michael, "He had some troubles with a stroke, and as he was recovering from that a seizure did him in. They said it stopped his breathing somehow. It was a tragic loss for the whole town. He'd lived here for most of his long life, and was quite the handyman; he would always be willing to help people out with anything they needed." She placed the book she retrieved from the shelf on the table before her, but didn't yet open it. "He was the previous keeper of Manisees Lighthouse, at the northwest end of the island. After he retired he built a house at the other end, where Palatine Light used to stand. The house you now own." She opened the book now, and started flipping through it. The title page read 'HISTORY AND WRECKS OF PALATINE POINT'.

There was a silence while Nola continued searching her book and Michael absorbed this information. The short summary of the man's life held so many memories for Latias, those few sentences glossing over several decades of her memories; half of his life and the clear majority of her own.

"How about her?" Michael gestured towards Latias, who looked back and forth between the two frantically. She had been hoping she'd be able to stay sidelined for this discussion.

"I only know as much as you told me and what I've already said. Mr. Georges was a vibrant part of the community, and often in his later years he could be seen in her company. He always said she was his mute great-niece, named Anne. When he died, we couldn't find any records she ever existed, and she wasn't mentioned by name in his will. His will did say, however, that his house wasn't to be sold until five years after his death, and was to be left exactly as-is until then. Said it was to be occupied by someone unnamed, that 'they know who they are'." She looked to Latias, "Now I know too."

Latias was overwhelmed by emotions, shock at the forefront. It made sense that she never knew about the will; Clayton had been cagey about his mortality after the stroke, and managed to keep much from her even through their psychic link. She never expected him to leave her the house even temporarily – he was usually more practical-minded than that – and the few times she managed to coax it out of him, he had told her he wanted the house to see new owners after him.

Nola caught the emotions that played across the face of Latias' human image, and changed the subject. "So what about you, Michael, what's your story? Anything for me to write about in my book?"

"Nah, I'm nothing special. I worked on pokémon storage networks and Pokémon Center systems, anything computerized dealing with pokémon I could help with. It made good money, but after a family tragedy I quit. Just had to get away, you know?" His tone was much lighter than the emotions Latias saw within him. She figured he must mean his wife, the one in the pictures around his house.

"Are you a trainer yourself?"

"Not really. I have a couple Ninetales, but they just watch the house, I don't battle with them. Was never really my thing." A surge of relief swept through Latias; if Michael wasn't truly a trainer, she had less to fear of capture. Her mind briefly turned to thinking of when she could reveal her true nature to him, with this worry lifted.

"You know," Nola smiled, "Everyone keeps getting fed up when the Pokémon Center on the island loses connection to the mainland's networks during storms, since we have to rely on satellite communications. Think you could set up something local for us? I bet the town would be willing to throw a nice chunk of change at you for it."

"Well, I don't have a lot of equipment on hand right now," Michael was speaking in the slow and steady tone Latias was learning meant he was trying to think something through even as he said it, "but if I could get my hands on everything I'd need, I'd see what I could do." A determined look came across his face, and Latias felt his emotional makeup take a more positive tint. "Actually, I might have enough to get started at least."

"Oh, that would be wonderful. If you could do that for us I think I might just have to see about adding another chapter."

Michael, watching as Nola leafed through the book, broke the silence. "You wrote the history of that area? You said a lighthouse was there before, can you tell me about it?"

Stopping on a specific page, Nola switched to a tone of speech that reminded Latias of a tour guide. "Palatine Light stood there for around a hundred years, originally built to warn sailors away from the reefs and shoals that extended northward from Palatine Point. These features were quite expansive though, and many inexperienced sailors still ran afoul them. When Palatine Light was damaged in a storm, they made the decision to not repair it, instead mounting a navigation beacon on steel pilings driven into the shoal itself several hundred meters north of the island. This beacon is now called Palatine Light itself." She pointed to a black and white picture on the page, depicting the lighthouse in question. "If you're interested in diving, three of the wrecks are in shallow enough water to visit. A fourth, if you're experienced."

Latias had been down to one of them herself, but she didn't have the underwater endurance to explore it, and was worried if she went inside she'd be too disoriented to return when she ran out of breath. By Michael's expression and shrug, it seemed he had similar reservations about diving on the wrecks, or at least too distracted to give it much thought.

"Ah, I can already see your mind is working on our situation. I'll let you go then, you already showed me what I wanted to know! You can take the book with you, as long as you bring it back soon." Michael smiled an apology as he stood, and took the book under one arm. Latias followed behind him as he made his way towards the door, which Nola opened. "Do keep me updated on your little project, if you decide to help us. I'll see about getting you some resources."

After saying thanks and goodbye, the two made their way back down the narrow stairs and onwards out of the café. They apparently caught the woman at the register's attention; she wished them a nice day as they left.

On the trip back to the dock they had tied up their inflatable, Latias could tell Michael was already deep in the storage problem. His emotional makeup told her that he enjoyed trying to solve these problems, and the task pushed to the side anything else that might have been weighing on him. He listened to the device feeding him directions absentmindedly, and Latias hung back several times as he almost made wrong turns, thankfully none of them dangerous.

She found his inflatable boat surprisingly comfortable; the section between the front of the U-shaped air tube that made its hull and the rigid front of the control station had a padded floor and was just the right size for her body to fit, with only her wings protruding to both sides and her neck over the front. As they traveled across the protected waters of the bay back to the house, she felt the emotions associated with his problem-solving waver several times. During a few of these moments she caught him staring at her illusion, which she displayed kneeling and leaning over the front. She didn't think much of it; there was not much else to look at but the smooth waters they glided over on plane.

Several hours later, Latias was trying to make sense of his machines. They had unpacked several of the boxes in the long empty room on the second floor, Latias helping where she could but eventually falling to the wayside. A framework now stood in the middle of the back corner in front of a window, different slots on the rack occupied by what she assumed to be computer systems. They were wired to a display that sat on the carpet in the other corner of the room's rear. White text scrolled across its otherwise dark screen.

"This is a prototype of a system I developed for Pokémon Centers to keep track of the different pokémon they had on-site. I ended up using it in my previous home to track the Ninetales, but I don't keep two hundred pokémon. There's plenty of room here to get a storage system at least started," Michael explained to her. Latias hovered close to him, her human illusion leaning over his shoulder to observe. Sparkles and Flufftail sat at the other end of the room, batting around a discarded piece of hardware near one of the metal posts that were placed in each corner of the room. He made a satisfied sound as the text stopped scrolling, and with a flourish made a keystroke on the half-assembled control panel on the floor in front of him.

[DETECTED (4) AREA SCANNERS: SOCKETS 3, 4, 6, 7]

[COMMUNICATING]

[TWO RECORDS RETRIEVED FROM MEMORY]

[ENTITY LIST PREPARED]

Michael hit the same key again, without the flourish. His eyes were glued to the screen now, and Latias felt an overpowering sense of anticipation from him, pushing aside all his other emotions.

1. [ID 7D6CCF98FDBED6EB. SPECIES: NINETALES 'FLUFFTAIL']

[MAJOR MEDICAL HISTORY: SEE FILE. SPECIAL NOTES: RESCUE CASE #H3145]

2. [ID: 525644AEAA4DC7B9. SPECIES: NINETALES 'SPARKLES']

[MAJOR MEDICAL HISTORY: NONE. SPECIAL NOTES: ALOLAN SUBSPECIES]

3. [ID: (UNASSIGNED). SPECIES: (ERROR 36) ' ']

[MAJOR MEDICAL HISTORY: (NO RECORD FOUND). SPECIAL NOTES: (NO RECORD FOUND)]

[ERRORS FOUND: CHECK DATABASE CONNECTION]

[UNREGISTERED POKEMON DETECTED: ALERT SUPERVISOR AND SYSADMIN]

Latias' heart sank as she tried to decipher the messages. She wasn't sure what exactly they meant, but she knew that there were three entries, when Michael would expect two. His anticipation, however, was immediately replaced by a vast measure of satisfaction, rather than confusion. She had been discovered, and he had already been onto it. She backed away from Michael quickly, but willed herself to remain in the room. Just earlier today she had decided it would be safe to tell him about her true form; she wasn't going to flee just because she didn't pick the means. A hand on the doorknob was still very reassuring.

Michael turned in his sitting position on the floor. He only wore a slight smile, but Latias could read far more into his emotional nature; he was exceptionally pleased with himself. His tone carried none of this, instead sounding very encouraging, even concerned. Even as he started to speak Latias could feel some of that concern bleeding through his emotions, and it heartened her.

"Don't worry, I'm not going to hurt you or something. I already had my suspicions from the boat trip back; the way it handled and the way the ropes along the sides behaved. Why don't we take a little break from this for now and get to know each other?"


Simply choosing a location to talk required a negotiation. Latias wanted it to take place outside where she could leave if it became uncomfortable. Michael wanted to see her true self, and so thought it best to do so indoors. They settled on the balcony running across the back of the second floor, where Michael sat near the door to the study after retrieving an item, and Latias landed herself under the bathroom window. The hum of the cooling unit stuck through the window behind her unnerved her a bit, another layer of mental noise currently running through her mind.

Michael sighed, and Latias wondered if he had to order his thoughts like she did. The shock and awe of seeing her real form for the first time was still settling to the bottom of his emotional signature when he spoke. "Alright, first thing's first. Your species is rare enough that I haven't seen it at any of the pokémon centers I've worked in. Do you have any other way to communicate?"

'CONNECT,' Latias pointed to her head with one claw as she held the whiteboard up in the other.

"Mentally? So you're a psychic type. That would make this more convenient, if you wouldn't mind. Don't be worried for my sake; I know whatever happened to the previous owner of this place wasn't your fault."

The thought that she somehow caused Clayton's death had never crossed her mind, though she knew some form of brain problem was responsible. She had done everything she could to fix it as it happened and failed, as far as she knew whatever damage occurred was far beyond her capacity to create. Despite Michael specifically saying he knew she wasn't to blame, the thought still offended her. She looked out to Palatine Light to the north in the distance, its rhythmic flashing calming her. Blink, five-count, blink, five-count, blink.

Enough time passed with her in Michael's company the past few days that she believed a link could indeed be established. She had a good feel for his psychic signature, but physical contact always helped. 'STILL', she wrote on the board and showed, before placing it beside herself and floating towards him. Though he complied, and despite his reassurances, she noticed his breathing quicken. She tried to ignore it as she touched her forehead to his and closed her eyes.

Every creature, whether human or pokémon or base animal, had a built-in resistance to intrusion by other minds, but those with more intelligence had greater and more complex ones. She probed the barrier surrounding Michael's, prodding and feeling for a good entry point. After applying enough pressure to create a deformity, she backed off on the power she applied against it, remembering how Clayton complained about a terrible headache when she forged that earlier connection. Instead of crashing through, a small hole in Michael's mind simply opened before her, and she pushed herself slowly through it to form a mental bridge. When she opened her eyes and drifted backwards, she saw he was staring at her with a curious expression, hunched over. She hoped she didn't cause some sort of adverse reaction with the intrusion.

"Hello?" she mentally spoke through the newly-formed channel.

Michael jerked up out of his slouch, looking all around him, but didn't immediately respond. She could sense from his emotions that he was confused, but the undercurrent of alarm wasn't as strong as she had feared. A good start to their connection. She wasn't sure why he didn't say anything until she detected an undercurrent of mental noise, with little clips and fragments of sounds filtering through the channel. "Speak aloud," she suggested.

"Oh. That's not as convenient as I was thinking. Still, I like your voice. Even if it seems to come from," he waved around vaguely before he found his tongue once more, "Everywhere"

"Convenience with time."

"What about you? I thought with something like this would let you speak in more than clipped phrases."

Latias shook her head. "Not yet. Can later. Gradual."

"Definitely not as convenient. I was hoping we could carry a normal conversation." He sat back and closed his eyes, and Latias felt his emotions re-ordering themselves after the shock of the new experience. "You can't hurry the process?"

"Mind must adjust."

"Mine or yours?"

"Both."

He remained silent for a moment, and Latias tried to think how to explain the process to him. Trying to teach a non-psychic these details quickly was like trying to pick up a radio signal with no power going to the receiver.

"Would I eventually be able to talk to you in your head?" Michael finally spoke once more.

"Already are. One creates other."

"I mean without looking like I'm talking to myself out loud."

"Soon," she sent back. She wanted to tell him how, but she couldn't find the word 'subvocalization' in his vocabulary, so she couldn't use it in her telepathy to him. The inability to use words someone didn't already know annoyed her, and using a new bond meant explaining the concept to him would quickly tire her out with psychic exertion. The matter would have to wait until the channel stabilized.

"This will have to do for now. Let's get down to it, then. Do you have a name? Besides 'A'?"

"Never given one." An interesting paradox; she realized she couldn't tell him her species name because he didn't already know it. Instead she picked up the whiteboard once more and wrote, 'LATIAS.' She could hear him mentally sound it out, and relished that he pronounced it correctly on the first try.

"What did the 'A' mean then?"

"Illusion name. Anne," she sent.

Though he fell silent again, Latias could feel his emotions shifting into concern and caution. From this she guessed the subject of his next question before he even asked it. "The man who lived here last, was he your trainer?"

She shook her head. "Father. Brother. Friend." A pause. "I loved him every way one can love another." The final sentence drained her, and she had to catch herself to still her slowly spinning head. That message she wished relayed as clearly as possible.

With a furrowed brow, "Don't hurt yourself." Then after a pause, "Physically?"

She blinked as her head cleared. She had forgotten how important that element was to human relationships. She shook her head negative, though that answer was only mostly correct; the nuance required too much effort to explain.

"I already heard how he died, so I'm not going to put you through that. The chair's gone, by the way." At these words her head snapped up, and she saw he wore a gentle smile, reassurance dominating his emotional makeup. "I'm not sure if you remember – you got real worked up about it – but you said I could get rid of it, and it didn't feel right keeping something around that made you uncomfortable I wasn't planning on using anyway. Fluff burned it this morning before you showed up."

A strange mixture of relief and regret coursed through her. Her memories of that room, and that piece of furniture in particular, were the biggest reason she stayed below the house rather than within it, and only accessed it through the second floor. "Thanks," she eventually sent him. A wave of relief and compassion spread from him in response.

The mention of the Ninetales by name reminded her how strange the names sounded. Usually humans named their pokémon after other human names, or concepts, or something the pokémon embodied or represented. Michael's two Ninetales' names seemed downright irreverent in comparison. "Ninetales names? Seem silly."

Michael laughed at this, "I didn't name them. We got them for our kids, as protectors and playmates, and we let them pick the names. I guess that's what you can expect from five-year-olds." By the time he finished speaking, Latias felt his emotions darken considerably.

Their bond's youth meant she didn't have a lot of control over her tone, but she tried her best to say as gently as possible, "What happened?"

The object he fetched before they began sat on the other side of the study door. He reached in and grabbed it now, revealing a folder full of papers. "My wife was driving the kids back from a concert one night. They were run off the highway. Cops said they thought it might have been a drunk driver, but they never found who did it." By the time he had fished what he was looking for out of the folder, the pressure of negative emotions he broadcast were so heavy, felt so oppressive, that when he slid the photograph across the balcony she jumped back in alarm. Cracks of confusion shot through the icy mass of his grief and anger.

"Can feel emotions," Latias tried to send, but from her nerves flubbed the first word, giving it a stutter as she caught and corrected it.

Michael buried his face in his hands. "Sorry. I try to hold it together when I talk about it, but sometimes it's too hard. Four years isn't enough time. I'm not sure if there's such a thing as enough time."

Latias was familiar with the emotions he felt, as they had been her own for a long time. Feeling them from someone else was a unique experience still. She looked down at the picture of the photograph. The vehicle depicted was hardly recognizable as a form of transportation. The car looked to her more like a crumpled ball of metal some giant discarded in a fit of rage.

As she handed the photograph back slowly, he looked up. His eyes were wet, but if he had shed tears he left no evidence. "You're a little further along than me, eh? Does it get better?"

Instead of drifting back to her original spot, she settled down right in front of him. Most days she handled it well now, but every so often it would still hit her hard. "A little. Slowly."

"Maybe we can be miserable together for a little while, then."

Something about the line struck Latias as funny, and she let out an amused snort. Maybe it was the awkward, hopeful lightheartedness that skated across the top of his emotions, that mere intent was enough to make it humorous. Apparently he understood her gesture for what it was, as she felt his amusement spread and take root, breaking up his despondence. The littlest sparks could create mutual joy that slowly thawed their frozen hearts.

Eventually she nodded her acquiescence, but added a condition; "Do not capture"

"Don't worry about that. I told Nola I wasn't a trainer, and I meant it. I almost didn't keep the Ninetales but," he looked down to where the front door was relative to them, where the two Ninetales kept guard on the porch to alert them if anyone approached. "Sometimes you can't escape the memories no matter how much you want to, and sometimes you'll take every reminder you can get."

"They okay?"

"I don't really know. They spend more time reassuring me than I do them, but it's still a two-way street. I don't understand them nearly as well as they understand me. I evolved them after the fact, on some harebrained assumption it might help them get over it, but I can't ever be sure that worked as intended." He leaned back and rested on his hands, and Latias drifted a little closer to prevent any more space opening up between them. "Fluff definitely took it hard; he loved my daughter, my eldest, more than food or sleep. Even after I evolved him, he wouldn't leave my side for months. Spark used to be a handful, and though she kept her independent streak she really mellowed out after."

The sun had set around the time they started talking, and dusk itself was disappearing from the skies. In the building darkness Latias wasn't able to see any of the folder's other contents as he replaced the picture back inside it. Despite her desire to continue talking to him, she couldn't think of anything to say; she wanted to leave this topic behind before either of them grew any more depressed.

Instead, Michael took the opportunity, as he stood up. "You know, I meant it when I said I'd like us to stick together. It feels wrong of me to kick you out of here after your history of the place. You may not be my pokémon, but I think you might make a nice roommate. Besides, you offered to help fix the place up, I have to repay you somehow."

The offer enticed her. The house didn't seem dead anymore with him around. Flufftail had removed that terrible reminder from the first floor. Now that her guard duties were shared with two other pokémon – and canids were likely better at the task than she – she didn't have to remain in a spot where she could hear approaching vehicles. Her thoughts must have been plain enough on her features that even a human could read her expression, because by the time she looked up at Michael again and nodded, he wore a grin.

First, she'd need to get some bedding. "Must retrieve. Please wait!"

"Wait! Is there any way we can speak wherever you're going?"

"Just talk, I hear. However far."

The grin left his face at her answer. "That's a little… inconvenient. Will I have privacy?"

"Connection improves, I'll teach." She navigated the contraction with ease, despite the telepathic complexity the formations strangely held. The emotional weight of the conversation was already helping her improve their new connection.

Though she felt he was still a little unsure about the idea, his relief at her response was her cue to depart. She zipped over the balcony railing and raced along the ground below. Speaking once more felt wonderful, even if she was temporarily limited until the channel settled and expanded. Michael's voice entered her head once more, now hollow and echoing now that she wasn't hearing him in-person. That too would improve in time. Her care to transmit her own voice as clearly as possible, to not unsettle him as Clayton was at first, was one of the reasons she had to keep her messages short for now.

"What else can this connection do?"

"Text. Pictures. Sensations. Dreams. Maybe more. I Need practice," she replied. She felt momentarily amused that the non-psychic of the pair was able to speak easier than the psychic.

"What about emotions? You said you could read those too"

"Innate sense. Like touch or taste."

"Huh. Which of those other features is easiest? We could try it first, work our way up from there."

Latias entered her cave while she pondered the query. She then sent the world 'HELLO'. Indecipherable noise filled the channel in return, what she thought might be a short burst of mingled, mangled curses. Concerned, she hovered in place until he finally responded. "Whatever you just did, please don't do it again."

"Dreams easiest then. Least interference. Already suggestible."

"Sounds interesting, but warn me beforehand until you spring it on me like that."

Latias tried transmitting a short laugh through the connection, building on its similarity to speech as a vocal affair.

"That was nice, though," Latias received from him, and she puffed with pride as she gathered a few choice cushions from her pile and exited her cave. "Where do you live, anyway?"

"Under house. In a cavern." She waited to respond until after she zipped around the base of the bluffs and dropped her payload on the balcony outside the study door, just in case he was watching for where she arrived from.

"That sounds awful. Oh, you're back." Michael's voice drifted from his bedroom to Latias' ears, and her mind adjusted the hollow echo of his mental speech to the clearer tones of his vocal speech as he walked over to let her in. Then, as she dragged the pile into the study, "I wasn't planning on sleeping yet, we still haven't eaten dinner."

Despite keeping her messages short and broken, arranging so many of them and keeping her voice appealing through the new channel still exhausted her. "Talking is tiring for now. Just a nap."

"Suit yourself. If I'm out before you're up, the Ninetales eat pretty generic pokémon feed, I'm sure it won't kill you at least."

"I feed myself. I rest myself." She constructed the messages to sound annoyed as she drew herself vertically half a meter off the floor, putting her eyes at the level of his. "Neither invalid nor yours."

Incomprehensible noise filtered back in varying intensities as she felt him trying to piece together what to say, only annoying her further. A third party emerged in the war between confusion and concern in his mind, an irritation to match her own. The irritation secured his faculties first. "Fine." He backed out through the door and turned down the hallway.

Latias wondered if she misinterpreted his confusion. Perhaps it stemmed not from a perceived ownership or lack of capability against her response, but his intent versus her meaning. Ungratefulness was the last feeling she wished to convey. "Wait!" She followed him and caught him by the shoulders just before he started down the stairs. "Sorry, I-"

"Can I send images to you?" He interrupted her. "We had a little trouble with that before, but it might make this easier."

The request took her off-guard. "Taking is easy. Sending is hard. Visualize."

Sitting on the top step, Michael proved much more adept at using his mind's eye than his mind's voice, though with their narrow connection Latias still bore the brunt of the work to retrieve them. A series of scenes flashed by, and she could pick up hints of emotion connected to each. Even images of his pokémon carried no signature of possessiveness like other trainers, and the message the impromptu slideshow depicted for her was a different one still. They illustrated the concern he had for family, that worry that rests in the back of the head even when everything is alright. A sense of detachment indicated he didn't feel she was family yet, but his meaning showed.

Returning to reality, she felt much heavier, and found she had lost most of her altitude. Michael had his arms on either side of her body, over her shoulders, steadying her. "That looked like it took a lot out of you. I'm allowed to be worried when I can see that so plainly, aren't I? Not concern for a pokémon, concern for a friend."

Latias nodded slowly, and he flashed her a warm smile in return. "Good. Please get some rest. Where are you thinking of staying?"

Despite her desire to trust him, the balcony door still presented a tempting escape route. "Study is fine."

"I'll try to keep the noise down." He stood and descended the stairs, leaving her to drift sluggishly back to the study.

She arranged her cushions for comfort and settled into them, staring out the windows in the still-slightly-ajar balcony door. The memories of the room and the psychic residue of the cushions heartened her; she knew Clayton would be happy with the day's events. The hypnotic flashing of Palatine Light to the north through the night lulled her to sleep. Blink, five-count, blink, five-count, blink…