“There are two ways to answer these riddles,” said Esther, drawing her hands back to gesture with them. “With the past, or with the future. We think of the cherry or the chicken as unchangeable things, and the song pokes at those assumptions. How is a cherry not a cherry? Well, when it’s a flower. How is a chicken not a chicken? Well, when it’s an egg. The song says, this thing you are used to, it has a past, and that past is part of it; what the cherry was before the cherry is part of the cherry. All right?” Rin nodded solemnly. “All right.” “But that’s only one set of answers,” said Esther,
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