#i also couldn't open the security border so i just climbed through it

[jaennie]

wheezing

[lokisbur]

Find it on AO3 and on SWA!!

The cut is to avoid AI to scrap my work, even if I modified my parameters.

The prompt is from here.

A nice breeze was flowing between the buildings, bringing with it the smell of spring and freshly cut grass.

It was a wonder, really, how they managed to rebuild so fast and even have nice grass growing again.

Inko was standing in the middle of the buildings, calmly looking around and watching workers all around busily continuing their work for the one-year festival.

She walked toward the biggest building, the one with the best view of the city, and started to climb up the stairs.

She could've taken the elevator, but what was the fun in that? Especially since they had decided to give the new building so many windows to light up the place and make it livelier for both the students and teachers alike.

The staircase also allowed her to see all the people outside and within the more secured ground, complimented by the grass she smelled earlier.

It was filled with stands being built and with students bustling around, 1-A, no, 2-A included.

The kids had face so much in such a short time, and then continued on the very second they were allowed to! A nice break of routine like a festival was the best possible thing to happen.

With a smile on her face, she continued to climb up the ungodly amount of stairs. But doing some cardio can only be good for her.

Once she finally reached the top, she pushed the service door to the rooftop, letting the much stronger wind blow her hair around and glad to receive a way to freshen her a bit. The sun blinded her for a second as she stepped out, but it was nothing compared to the man she could see the back of.

Her man.

He had gone through hell too. As much, if not even more than the kids back on ground level. And damn if she was to let him go on his own after everything. So she had confessed. Not in the best of places nor at the best of times, but she did. And the end result was what they had now. Among other things, of course.

She got closer to him, sure that he had heard her come. He was still a bit on edge, always expecting something to happen. But he hadn't moved or cringed, or reacted in any way she could notice, at least. And this was an improvement.

He was just... standing. Straight, maybe a bit too much, his hands in his pocket and his body close enough from the border to look down to what was happening underneath, but not too close for an accident to happen. She couldn't get what he was thinking at times. Especially when he would just stand like that at the top of a building. And any building, really. But she knew that her presence would not be brushed away. She even liked to think it was soothing.

After a few minutes of sight-seeing, he finally moved by pulling his hand out of his pocket and letting it down, inviting her to take it, which she did eagerly. She liked his hands. They were rough from fights, the skin on it having ben cut and bruised many times. But he was oh so gentle with them. When they would brush against her skin in the mornings, or stroke through her hair to style them in a way she had never tried before, or when they would hold her hands, cold and shaky on bad days, looking for comfort, but oh so warm and strong on the good days. They were the latest, today.

When she got close enough, she grabbed his arm and held onto it with both hands, putting a bit of her weight on his side. She stayed like that for a while, looking at the city at the bottom of the hill. It was breathtaking.

The view had changed so much. Almost everything had been destroyed, and yet, a year later, a good part of the city has risen from the rubbles, stronger than ever.

She had hoped so. It was bound to be a nice day, and she liked to see him happy. He deserved it and she would make sure that he did get this happiness.

She was still worried, sometimes, that she wasn't enough compared to the other. That she was just putting a balm on forever opened wounds and nothing of all this was fully real or reciprocated. But before she could go down this lane, her hand was squished gently, and her face moved towards the sky.

She knew of two. The normal sky, the one everyone was accustomed to. And the one she adored, the one encased in darkness, smiling at her, in unison with his smile. The one she never grew tired of. The one that was shining at her and enraptured her.

"Are you alright?"

She nodded. "Everything is alright."

He let out a chuckle. She loved that too.

It took her a moment to notice, but he was currently bending toward her, hand steady under her chin and tilting it slightly. Oh. She rose up on her tiptoes suddenly in order to meet him sooner but miscalculated her speed.

What had supposed to be soft kiss ended up in both their faces smashing into each other and making her lose her footing, not that she had any with how she had been standing. She didn't stumble long though, as the hand holding her face swiftly moved down to her side in order to hold her closer.

"Let me do the bending next time," his low chanting voice said.

She pouted a bit, "I wanted to meet you faster. I'm allowed to reach you too." She received a kiss on her hand at that.

"Inko, it's easier for me to bend down than for you to reach up like that," he pointed out.

"I know, but I like doing it," she retorted. "Example number 1."

At that, she rose up again and took his face in her hands to lower it to her height. Finally coordinated, their lips met in a soft embrace. "Example number 2," she murmured to his lips, before kissing him more passionately, breaching the soft opening with her tongue and letting him taste her lips.

"You taste sweet," he said, finally allowing them to take in a breath.

She had eaten cotton candy earlier, a small gift for having helped their son's class put up some decorations. She knew he still wasn't allowed to eat too sweet things, or anything too hard on his stomach for that matter, but she still could make him taste those wonders in another way.

"I know," she smiled. She let herself stand normally again, looking at him one more time before turning around and pulling him with her.

"Now come on, Toshinori, they're about to start the festival soon and I don't want to miss it!"

She felt his hand hold hers tightly, not needing to turn around to see him smile again, his hearty laugh was enough.

[jimintomystery]

The Search for Noah's Ark

Many ancient cultures had accounts of a hero surviving a divine flood by building a giant boat, but the story of Noah (Genesis 6-9) stands out, since it is included in the canon of the Abrahamic religions. For centuries, it was not unusual for Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers to report that Noah's Ark was still sitting on the mountain where it came to rest at the end of the story. But it wasn't until the 20th century that a documented expedition went to look for it.

[Above: A man stands between Mount Ararat, where explorers typically look for Noah's Ark, and a sign for Noah's Ark National Park, the official location of the ship according to the Turkish government.]

The Bible says Noah's Ark landed in "the mountains of Ararat," without any clear indication where that would be. A 4th century Latin edition translated "Ararat" as "Armenia," popularizing that association in Western Christianity. The Armenians themselves used Greek or Syriac bibles, so they only learned of the Ararat-Armenia connection centuries later, from visiting crusaders. Thereafter, the sacred Armenian mountain Masis has been known as "Mount Ararat." Since the 1920s, the mountain has been a part of Turkey, which calls it Ağrı Dağı ("mountain of pain").

After the first confirmed ascent of Mount Ararat in 1829, it became more plausible that someone might go up there and look for Noah's Ark. But the idea wasn't taken seriously until the 1940s, when an article circulated about a Russian pilot spotting a giant wooden boat on Ararat during World War I. Supposedly, the czar ordered a thorough exploration of the structure, but then those no-good godless commies took over and suppressed the findings. The story was ultimately discredited, but not before it stoked the imaginations of American Christians that were eager to prove that the Bible was literally true.

Fascinated by the Russia story, realtor Eryl Cummings and his wife Violet devoted the rest of their lives to tracking down stories about Ark sightings. These tales typically involved American soldiers who said someone showed them a photo of the Ark during World War II, or old Armenian immigrants who supposedly visited the Ark as children. "Ark fever" heated up, though, when a sighting was reported from Turkey. In 1948, Eryl was invited to lead an Ararat expedition planned by retired missionary Aaron J. Smith. Cummings declined, however, and Smith ultimately led the trip himself the following year.

The 1949 expedition is instructive, because it sets the tone for all subsequent attempts to visit Ararat in search of the Ark. Upon arrival, Smith was beset with bureaucratic delays. Permits needed to be paid for, and local authorities rejected clearances that had been granted at the federal level. Reading between the lines, its clear to me that Ark-seekers would pay anything to achieve their dreams, and corrupt Turkish officials took full advantage of that. The team quickly depleted their funds, and didn't get to the mountain until the end of the climbing season.

It's also telling that there hasn't been a lot written about Smith's mission, not even by the Ark hunters who followed in his footsteps. It's much easier to find stories about the Fernand Navarra controversy in the '50s and '60s, or people who couldn't even prove they'd been to the mountain. And it's Eryl Cummings, not Aaron J. Smith, who came to be seen as the father of the movement. There's a simple reason for that: Smith put in the work, but he didn't find anything. Cummings, on the other hand, accumulated all of the tantalizing stories of people who might have found something, which could become a useful lead for the next expedition.

[Above: Reconciling descriptions from two purported eyewitnesses, Elfred Lee illustrates the collapse of Noah's Ark into Ahora Gorge. The gorge was formed in 1840 by a powerful earthquake, which happens to precede the earliest alleged sightings in modern times. Violet Cummings suggested that the quake was divinely ordained to reveal the Ark and usher in the Apocalypse.]

The 1970s saw a wave of books about the search, most of which derived their information from the work of Mr. and Mrs. Cummings. Violet and other writers cast the quest in an apocalyptic light, suggesting that God had hidden the Ark all this time only to reveal it as a sign that the End Times were imminent. The implication was that Noah's Ark could not be discovered until the appointed hour but, paradoxically, Judgement Day will be stalled unless believers find the ship as soon as possible.

"Arkeology" arguably peaked in the 1980s, when astronaut Jim Irwin took up the search. By that point Turkey was wary of letting amateur climbers wander around so close to their border with Iran and the Soviet Union. But the eighth person to walk on the Moon was able to open some doors and, more crucially, cut through some red tape. However, Irwin still had to deal with the punishing conditions of Mount Ararat itself. His adventures there are best remembered for the injuries he sustained, and the heart issues that made it increasingly unwise for him to return year after year.

Jim Irwin no doubt inspired a new generation of Ark-seekers, but by the late 1990s the community was bitterly divided about where to look. For thousands of years, legends suggested that the ship was in plain sight for anyone who dared to climb up and find it. But fifty years of aerial reconnaissance, satellite photography, and boots on the ground had proven otherwise. Debate intensified about whether Ararat was even the right mountain, and about the validity of other possible sites, forcing people to re-evaluate the established lore surrounding the quest. So you end up with one "arkeologist" attacking the reasoning of another, often with logic that could be extended to dismiss the entire search.

[Above: In 2010 Noah's Ark Ministries International released photos like this one, purportedly taken inside a massive wooden structure on Mount Ararat. NAMI refused to reveal the location for independent verification, citing security concerns. Within days of the announcement, former associates of NAMI came forward accusing them of staging the whole thing.]

That background of in-fighting put a damper on a 2010 press event claiming that a Hong Kong evangelical group had found the Ark on Ararat. You'd think video footage of this discovery would delight Ark hunters. On the contrary, many were as skeptical as mainstream scientists. The feuding over which Ark theories were right or wrong had left them wary, because if some flaky story captured the public imagination, it might discredit the entire movement. Which is ironic, considering that the movement wouldn't exist at all if not for an urban legend about a Russian cover-up.

At a glance, it may seem like "Ark fever" is part and parcel with religious fundamentalism, or maybe just a specific flavor of Christian anti-intellectualism. However, even some influential creationists have debunked the search for Noah's Ark. There's no scriptural basis for assuming that God arranged for the Ark to remain intact until modern times, or that it was meant to be rediscovered, or that locating it would have any bearing on the end of the world. The entire rationale for the search is that dozens of unconfirmed reports can't all be wrong, which isn't a solid foundation for an archaeology project.