Atlas Outtake #9: Temple Mount

It's a lot for a single stone to hold, where Adam's dust was gathered, where Cain and Abel sacrificed, where Abraham intended to, where Solomon built, where the Prophet ascended, where Raphael is scheduled to play his trumpet, where the dead and living meet, with a small hole in it: it's the center of the world, the foundation rock, but it's not a stone by itself. It extends below and around in every direction outwards beyond the Dome's foundations, soft limestone easily cut to pieces by the Crusaders' swords, a thick crust above a well of souls reaching all the way to the ocean that birthed it, the stone itself the salty skeletons of a sea's bed, extending out so far that it's hard to say where geological Palestine ends and the lands that are unholy begin.