Here was a riddle: If nothing lived in Hell, then how was it that bones were stripped bare? For it was hawks and buzzards, nibbling crawling bugs, that made skeletons gleam so on earth. Death was scrubbed clean because life went on; rot and decomposition were growth; the cycles begot one another, so how did death polish itself in these wastelands, where time stood still? Boundaries are porous, she thought. That must be it; the only explanation. Life seeped in, even here at its antithesis; life made death beautiful, and kept the circle going. But the implications of this were profound! This
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