He's about to ask about Tokyo - he thinks someone else mentioned being from there, maybe they know each other! - but then she mentions the desert and his attention is captured. The way she describes it is simple and brief, but it strikes a pang of homesickness in him anyway.

"Right? Everything's so...open. There's just ground and rocks and sky. Nothing to make you feel trapped." He sits up and draws his knees up to his chest, sitting more or less beside her now, and fixes a baleful, tired glare at the trees. "Not like this. Everything's closed in here and you can't get away from it."

He picks up a dead pine twig from the ground beside him, fidgeting with it in one hand, before listlessly tossing it away. "I hate it."