<span style="color: Gray">"Eh? Saisho's been devasated?"</span>Lydia's eyes grew wide at the news of the cataclysm. How could she have not known? This village was small and isolated certainly, but surely there must have been some way for them to get news. The more she thought about it, however, the more she realized just how cut off from the world she was. What else had happened without her knowing?<br/><br/><span style="color: Gray">"So not a pokemon but a spirit...that is...interesting."</span>She struggled to find the words. The relationship between pokemon and the world had always been an enigmatic and mysterious one. Researchers and philosophers had spent their lives trying to uncover the bonds between pokemon and ancient animistic faiths. Lydia, however, could not be bothered to take more than a surface-deep look into such things. She was a trainer to her core, too preoccupied in bringing out the best in her pokemon to worry over the finer points of spiritualism. Though given recent events, it might be worth learning more.<br/><br/><span style="color: Gray">"Well, terrible as it is I suppose there's not much we can do but move forward."</span>She nodded to reassure herself as much as any of the others.<span style="color: Gray">"If these islands are testing us I don't intend to back down."</span><br/><br/>Her thoughts were interrupted by noise as another trainer, one she was sure she recognized from town came in, tending to a battered-looking magikarp...well, more so than usual. The ugly fish were never very gainly to begin with. Even more distracting was the pansage, Pan. "Exuberant" might be the word for it, at least the most polite one as its trainer gave noticeably bouncy chase after it before settling into the water.<br/>Lydia gave both Susan and Aisha polite smiles as they introduced themselves.<span style="color: Gray">"Well, the trainer population of Utsumi seems to have grown quite a bit. It's starting to get a bit cramped in here."</span><br/>Five younger women in the bath was certainly more nubile flesh than Lydia had seen in quite a long time given the general age of people in the village. Still, she tried not to let it distract her as she too sank into the hot water of the bath, sliding down until the water reached her neck and letting it strip off the days aches and pains.<br/><br/>The pokemon certainly made things more lively, and she considered retrieving her clothes if only to let out Kat, but she recalled her pokemon's opinion of steam, and now that she could really feel the water her clothes may as well have been a million miles away for all the desire she felt to retrieve them. This was simply bliss.<div class="messageTextEndMarker"> </div>