They touched a radiator. She told him she did. Touching the hot metal was less painful than not being able to touch his face. He was in a completely different location, remembering his head, the back of it, hitting a radiator after being thrown through the room by an urge to escape from his father. He had fallen into a tunnel of memories, filled with moments when his scull or the scull of others, was hit by much heavier objects than it should be.
He remembered the stone he threw, the single one, and how it tore open the skin of a running boy, he remembered the cut, the consequences.
Then there was the other boy, holding on to on his back, laughing loudly, until his skull accidentally hit the bedroom wall.
In another image, it was him again, falling down, holding on to a friend, his friend falling on top of him, his head against concrete, the pre-manufactured walls of a future building.
He remembered the dark spots against the sky. He remembered the large knifes pressed by women, against his head.
He had traveled far, he had managed to cross much more than a river, or an ocean, or whatever that water was that could easiest be crossed by voices...
It was to be their last conversation. If he managed to fall through that tunnel in the midst of a simple chat, how far would he fall if they continued to talk. She clearly had the power to trigger very powerful images. It was like magic. He would never tell her about it. He would never tell her about anything else either... not the other, much stronger sequences of memories and forward flashes that followed...
Even if their conversation must have appeared very light to anybody who accidentally happened to observe it... the reality of it was that of two very different trips, taken from very different starting points... and ending up in quite dramatically different locations...
He looked at his hand. Under his fingernails and on them was his own blood.
Maybe they were both trying to do the same thing.
He hoped she was okay. And yet he would never ask her about it.