Redsand Canyon did he go on down the mountainside, and leave you all alone?

If there was any perfect opposite to childhood innocence, it would not so much be violent depravity than the inversion he saw here. 

Then again, there was a candidness in his answer he found difficult to deny. The flat absence of guile is almost reassuring. Riley seemed utterly immutable and wasn't that enough, to have that one constant in a life? Maybe it is. He concedes. But there's nothing stopping you.

He doesn't pretend as if he can get through to him. He's tried his best his whole life to mince everything down into dystopian little cubes, but this is where he can give up on trying. It can help, whenever you are lonely. Doesn't it get old, being lonely. 

As if on cue, a hot wind wails through the canyon. It's gone as soon as it appears.