It is rarely known that after the ark was built, it spent decades sitting there in the desert, like a public declaration of its builder's insanity, before it did what it was meant to do for the forty days of the deluge.
In those decades, the ark was first a laughing stock, then a public latrine and finally a drug mine.
Since the prophesized deluge never came, and since the man who built the ark never quit rambling about it, it shifted swiftly from a being public joke to a public embarrassment.
To punish the man who had caused that embarrassment, the townsfolk used it as public latrine. They defecated all over it. From bow to poop, from stem to deck, was covered by their communal byproduct.
As legends go, when the ark was entirely pooped upon, came a plague. A rather strange one too, since none of the drugs they had could fix it. The disease was not as fatal as it was ugly and reeked of sin.
One day, one of the sick decided to meditate on his ill-fortune by spending his thoughts on the public's favorite toilet: the ark in the desert.
While he was minding his business, the man slipped and fell straight into a heap of his kinsmen's poop. Washing the damn thing off him, he saw that where the poop had touched him, the disease was healed.
The good news spread fast. Anyone (and that was everyone) who caught the plague, went to the ark to gather handfuls and cratefuls of poop.
Whatever was the method of treatment, as long that the disgusting material touched that area the disease was - miraculously - gone. Kind of like penicillin. It was lathered on, dropped in the eyes, swallowed, diluted, concentrated, injected, and even smoked.
But never replicated.
The only excrement powerful enough to fix symptoms of the plague was stuff brought from the ark. Hence, being so highly in demand, the ark turned into a mining field: Every part of it was covered by townsfolk meticulously searching between crooks and crannies, picking and scooping and tweezing, and finally wiping for the golden dust off the ark.
When the ark was spick and span, even cleaner than when Noah had left it, the plague ended.
That was the last installment of @G30HM, under the theme: “7 days to write fairy tale”.
