"There's so much road construction when it doesn't rain, dust in the air instead of smog, a small capitol instead of a very large one, but still a city. You've probably never even visited rural areas in Thailand, have you?"
"Not much."
"What happened to your wedding ring?"
"It was raptured from my finger, so to speak."
"Did you lose it?"
"It lost me."
"I think that you need company right now."
"Sure, what the hell," said Nawin. "Maybe I'd like to see you nude."
"I know you do," retorted the Laotian.
His discombobulated and desultory mind made his eyes alternate in momentary gazes between the rain and the flooded land beneath until, for variety, he looked at those who were within the arched entry of the monument as he was. He supposed that he should begin to see more of a commonality with those in his proximity than he did for he was feeling loneliness impale him albeit the loneliness of being in communion with another when not wishing to be so rather than that of a lone traveler to Laos, needing the company of others. It was the only salient loneliness that he knew, and the sudden recognition of this oddity or perhaps the coldness of being so wet made him shudder and want to believe in them as cognate beings which they undoubtedly were in the strict physical sense. But demigods and men all had heads and faces, torsos and limbs. Regular men even had feelings and thoughts in some proportional quantity even if it were a degraded quality that was at the dictates of their myopic needs and agenda at the time. So, although similar in that sense, he thought scornfully, there was little that was so remarkable in it.