[ Dust, as it is commonly understood, is mostly made of dead skin cells, hair, and all the little fragments of things accumulated and shed by the living blown into some corner by the wind.

This is not dust as it is commonly understood. There simply isn't enough alive in this place. ]

How long does it take for wood and paper and cotton to completely disintegrate into this?

[ The young looking girl tilts her head at the dust on Abbacchio's finger. Rhetorical question, she doesn't expect any layman to know, but Carol Malus Dienheim who has spent centuries analysing every earthly material does: ]

Too long. Nothing has been through here for centuries.