It's the cadence of a poem that cuts through to him, jars him out of his reverie. He looks at her, properly, for the first time; those eclipse eyes focus, tighten at the edges. There are flecks of blood in his eyelashes.

"I don't know that one." He sounds a little impressed about it, even more when he parses the wreck of her: bandages, creepy eyes, a supernova of something-else under her skin. It's like she glows under blacklight. He doesn't have the words for it yet. "Yeah— yeah. I don't know what it is," and here he chews his lip, digs his fingers into the sand in fitful little clenches, "but it's everywhere. It's in the dirt, in the air, in us.

"I know it sounds insane," he adds, impatiently, like that's a caveat they need to get out of the way. "But— do you know what I mean?"