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In "Facade" (The Sandman #20), Element Girl dies after a conversation with Death of the Endless (and possibly with Ra as well). Below is an image of her death (borrowed from another post on this site, courtesy of Gallifreyan):

Rainie finishes her (pseudo?) conversation with Ra, becomes a whitish statue, and crumbles into a heap of white grains on the floor:

What happened to her body, chemically? In earlier panels of this issue, she seems to transform her body into real chemicals for various uses (eg magnesium1 to blow a door open, nitrogen gas to escape her clothes); is there any evidence (within the universe or without) as to what happened to Element girl on a chemical level?

1 Sodium may have been a better choice; however, I understand that it's likely that the writers chose an element that more non-scientists would associate with flashy explosions -- I assume many people would simply be confused by a reference to "half of table salt" when Element Girl breaches the door. (But see also "Don't Flush Sodium Down The Toilet.")

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  • She precipitated.
    – user40790
    Commented May 5, 2017 at 18:23
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    Salt, apparently. But there's no way to tell why, since the whole thing is just her having her "gift" removed by Ra, Edit: she was originally human, apparently, so it must just be one final use of her powers, turning into a salt present in the human body.
    – user40790
    Commented May 5, 2017 at 18:25
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    @Terriblefan "Because magic"?
    – Shokhet
    Commented May 5, 2017 at 18:28
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    Looks into the face of a god, turns into a pillar of salt? I sense symbolism.
    – Adamant
    Commented May 5, 2017 at 18:28
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    Her powers resemble chemistry, because she turns bits of herself into chemical compounds, and she knows how to use reactions to do what she wants (superhero can superhero)... but her ability to do that is not explainable (the comic pulls out the technobabble term "morphogenic field"), and neither is her final state.
    – Radhil
    Commented May 5, 2017 at 19:13

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The Sandman Companion refers to her "petrification" after she prays to Ra to remove her elemental powers. I think we can reasonably assume that she simply returned to the regular (CHON) human form she had on the day she received his 'blessing' but long since drained of life.

Having presented options for living that Rainie refuse to hear, Death tells Rainie how to achieve her wish — which is by simply asking it of Ra, the sun god who transformed her All it takes to reach him is to look out a window.

Raising the blinds to finally let sunlight flood into her perpetually dark apartment, Rainie says: "Please, Sir—I don't want to be me. Thank you for making me special, but I don't want to be special. I just want it to stop. Can you make me normal again?” In her mind, Ra tells her to look at him. Ramie does so and exclaims, "I never realized before. The sun. It’s just a mask. too. And the face behind it … It’s beautiful" and with that, Rainie dies… leaving behind a petrified body wearing an expression of beatific joy.

In the previous issue, there's a reference to all things ending up as "dust and ashes" on the final day. This sounds like a fair description of how Element Girl ended up.

enter image description here

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