It's unwelcome confirmation. Still, wearily, he puts it aloud:

"Then they are not a slideshow of our relevant dead," he amends, "but our relevant killed. Metaphorically speaking, I'm sure." He is immensely not sure. "Our enemies harmed, our families failed."

It more than explains the crush of bodies beneath them. He'd heard the indictment not a week ago: I charge you with acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, the human race—

He is achingly, splittingly angry. The pressure builds, and they are drifting nearer to the body of the woman. She is right there on the riverbank, hanging gruesomely suspended for all to see, the smooth line of her sleeping throat picked at by birds. He is instants away from turning the whole of the river to his weapon, and crushing the life out of anything that would dare defile her.

But it isn't real, and he is being foolish.

"The question," he says, in tones of patience stretched to breaking, "is what we are meant to learn."