com———p—o———s———i—t——io——ns s—h—a—r—d———s——            ———o—f            i—c—e h
o
m
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