[Well, that calls for retaliation, and so he playfully acts like he's trying to talk despite her hand, making some dumb mumbling sounds, then bites at her fingers until he breaks free, laughing.]

Okay, but wouldn't it be cool? Knowing this is all ocean some day, out here in the fucking desert? We're the only people who get to see all this shit. Nobody's gonna believe our stories when we get back.

[Maybe there are others, though. He's open to the idea of that, because if he's learned anything through being black-brained it's that each individual person is nothing special and very little that seems unique actually is. They're all just pointless grains of sand in the whole beach that is Earth, after all. Fucking dust drifting around in the dark.

It doesn't upset him as much as it should, probably.

He drives on until they finally cross the border into Arizona, and onward still until the faint pink-green glow around the rim of the sky hints that sunrise is coming. They're up in the foothills of big low mountains, some tail end of the Rockies where it's desert, but the desert has trees, and a sign for a viewpoint makes for a good excuse to pull off the road, finally and look out at the landscape below.]

All those lights out that way must be Tucson, then.