It wasn't like water. In fact, hitting the searing surface was almost like hitting asphalt. But it was soft enough that he began to sink very rapidly. He was too shocked by the pain to scream, to shocked to think. There were no words that could describe the pain, the skin and tissue on his hands bubbling with the heat, his clothes quickly catching on fire. His tormented writhing only accelerated his sink into the molten rock, and then his head went under.
Whether he had taken a breath or not wouldn't have mattered, his face was gone in seconds. Then it was back. Then it was gone. He lost track of time, lost track of pain, of reality, as his brain died and resuscitated, broke down and was recreated, over and over again. It was alive, then It was dead, then It was alive AND dead at the same time. Flickering in and out of consciousness, the Thing tried to make sense of it's existence. What were memories? What was sense? There was no sense that the Thing could understand. It tried to hear, but there was no noise. Strange. It should have had the capacity to hear. It tried to see, but there was no sight. Something was missing at the other end. In between Its own death and recreation, the Thing was panicking. Nothing was responding, and if nothing was responding, that meant It had to be dead. Yet the Thing was not dead, or at least, not aware of It's own death. Was It dead? It couldn't tell.
And then, something came through. A burst of stimulus from some far off corner! What was this sense again? Touch! It was faint and flickering, but the sensation was there! The Thing was alive! It remembered something It had forgotten in the burning, there were instincts It could activate! If It had stimulus response from one far away limb, then there was a chance It could get a response from the others!
Little by little, the Thing fired off commands like It never had before, if It could remember having done such a thing. And to It's... (Glee? Relief?) Well, to It's advantage, faint responses were coming back in. As the temperature cooled around It's protective shell, It began to rediscover It's sense of self. It was not one Thing, but part of a larger Thing. It had a skeletal system, muscles, and skin, all of which were under attack by an unknown intruder. And the source of the stimulus in It's limb (Arm) was another Thing. Ah, so Things must be social Things. And the other Thing was helping It. Pulling It in a direction that was cooler, away from the intruder.
With a greater control of It's senses, the Thing redirected impulses to follow the other Thing, moving through the intruder. It kicked out with It's lower sensors (Legs) and gradually touched something solid, something that was not the intruder or the other Thing.
(It's a wall, climb it.)
Climb? What was climb? Before the Thing could understand what a Climb was, the instincts It had already set to run were moving the Thing forward, clambering over the wall and out of the intruder. Slowly, the Thing began to reconnect with lost arms and legs, sensors in the bone, in the muscle, on the skin. There was a sensation that It couldn't comprehend, one that felt like the intruder was still there. One that made the Thing feel very ... (Sleepy.) And so the Thing went to sleep.
And Andy woke up.