c—om——po———s———i——t——i———on——s— sh——ard—s—            ———o——f—            —i—c——e— h
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e ...he had probably fallen there during the darkest hours of the night. The night of a great snowstorm, in which flakes as sharp as blades fell, almost like hail, driven by a furious south wind. Soaked by that snow, which had first melted and then frozen into shards of ice, the body had been discovered at the foot of a sheer drop, torn by the rocks it had struck on the way down.
—Umberto Eco, The Name of the Rose