#even though the actual yurt only plays a small role

[angst-fairygodmother]

Otherworldly (Klaus Hargreeves x Reader)

A/N: sometimes, I say words, and the words root themselves into my brain and then fics happen. I am yearning tonight (and also maybe feeling some anxiety based on the angst that slipped it’s way in here?)

P.S. Titles are hard and I hate them.

Word Count: 1426

You yawned, stretching and rolling over in the pile of blankets, pillows, and furs, the mattress sinking beneath your movements. It was much darker than it had been, the only lights in the circular space a thin shred of moonlight filtering down from the chimney hole and the faint red glow of campfire coals.

Sitting up, you kept one of the soft woolen blankets around your shoulder with one hand and awkwardly shoved boots onto your socked feet with the other.

It was noticeably, blessedly silent. You took that to mean that the unwanted guests that had come to visit you earlier were finally gone. But at the same time, you didn’t hear Klaus either, which concerned you and made you feel colder than the air possibly could. Ever since time traveling, you hated him being out of sight, the idea of losing him threatening to suffocate you it was so frightening.

“Klaus?” you called, wrapping the blanket tighter around you rather than hunting around in the dark for your coat, and wandering to the door-flap.

When the cult had been immediately overwhelming, their presence threatening to push you to a panic attack as they crowded about, Klaus had suggested sneaking off, just the two of you to his yurt in Iceland. You assumed at first that it was some sort of strange, Klausian innuendo. But, as it turned out, he had meant a real yurt, actually outside Reykjavik. You two had been here, blissfully isolated in a world of your own for going on three weeks, and part of you never wanted to go back to civilization.

Except when he wandered off into the rolling, snow covered land around you. Sometimes it was only for a few minutes, or not far from the yurt. Other times, he’d leave you for hours, with no idea where he was or what might happen to him. In his defense, you hadn’t told him what it felt like or the fear that gripped your heart in a vice, so used to being strong and supportive for him that you had long forgotten how to let yourself be vulnerable, how to need help without feeling weak. If there was one thing ingrained in you from your childhood, it was that weakness was a personal failing and negated any good or worth in you. Or at least, that’s what your dearly departed father had taught you.

Your breath was coming quicker, short, shallow bursts that warned of worse to come.

“Klaus?” you called again, more frantically this time, voice breaking.

You exited the tent, whipping your head around wildly to find him, blood racing in your ears when you didn’t spot him immediately.

“Y/N?” you heard his soft voice finally, just about the time everything was tunneling, as he rounded the large tent-structure. “I didn’t realize you were up.”

You nodded, not quite trusting your voice as relief washed over you.

“Well, since you are, there’s something I want to show you.”

You took his out-stretched hand, twining his icy fingers with your own, and let him lead you. To the ends of the Earth if he wanted to. You kept your eyes on your feet as you stumbled behind his surprisingly nimble steps up the rocky hills behind your abode. The higher you climbed in the darkness, the more you became nervous for a new reason, fearing that one of you would lose their footing and fall, and then one of you would lose the other as surely as if you were separated again in space and time, with no hope of reunion this time.

Finally, just as you were about to express your concern, you crested the top of the hills onto a wide plateau. A thin stream burbled nearby, cutting through rock and snow in a winding path that crossed yours before twisting away again to a shallow pool on the other side of the space. The wind whistled around you, making you shiver and marvel at how Klaus stood there, so calm and still despite the plummeting temperatures. It ruffled his long hair, promising hours of detangling later, which you found yourself looking forward to, taking advantage of the time to card your fingers through the soft curls in all the ways you both loved.

He turned around to face you excitedly and laughed.

“What?” you asked, frowning in confusion at his amusement.

“You,” he said, shaking his head playfully. “I know I’m beautiful, but this is ridiculous Y/N.”

“I…what is? I was just…admiring how free you look right now. Is that a problem somehow?”

His grin was blinding. “I bring you to this gorgeous sight and you’re too busy staring at me to even notice. It’s adorable.”

“I mean, I guess it’s a nice plateau, but you could have brought me in the morning.”

“Look up, you silly goose.”

You did you were told and felt the air rush from your lungs. “Oh…”

Above you both, the cobalt sky was dotted with stars like shards of ice and the pale white sliver of moon, and cutting through it all in ephemeral ribbons of pinks and green, dancing like the gowns of a hundred heavenly gods, was the aurora borealis.

Despite the stunning sight, your gaze wandered back down to Klaus who was watching you watch the lights, the flickering of the sky above you reflected in his emerald eyes and casting an unearthly pattern over him like some fae king come to steal you away. For a moment, he didn’t seem real, an illusion or dream only and it brought an unbidden sob to your lips. Once the first had escaped, it was like a floodgate opening and all of the fear and pain you had been feeling spilled forth.

Two strong but frigid arms wrapped around you, pulling you close as you cried, and even in your distress you instinctively opened the blanket so that it could cocoon you both.

“Hey, sh-sh-sh…” he murmured, pressing his lips to your crown. “Y/N, what’s wrong?”

“Nothing. Everything. I…I don’t know anymore,” you sniffed.

“Talk to me?” he asked.

And that was all he needed to say. Everything you had bottled up came flooding out of you, your tongue practically tripping over itself in your rush to explain your fears of losing him and how you missed your own time and everyone you knew and even though you wanted to spend forever with him, it was still lonely not knowing anyone and thinking that the rest of the Academy was gone, how being in the 60s and trying to move on made you feel broken and lost.

“I just…feel like everything’s gone and without it I don’t even know who I am, let alone what to do. And sometimes it’s like I can’t breathe because of it,” you finished, shaking your head and pressing your face to his chest and feeling his hug tighten.

“Oh, Y/N,” he sighed. “I understand. And it’s going to be okay. When it was just me, I wanted to be numb, or nothing at all. I wish you’d told me sooner, before it got so bad and I could have helped…”

“I…didn’t know how to.”

You both lapsed into silence for a while, simply taking in each other’s embrace, each other’s essence.

“How can I fix it?” he asked finally, breath fluttering the hair by your ear.

“I think you already did. I just needed to let it out and be told it would be okay,” you admitted sheepishly.

“Promise me you’ll talk to me from now on?”

You nodded. “I promise.”

“Good.”

He brushed a tender kiss to your lips and you felt him smile against you, before breaking away and twirling you in his arms so that your back was pressed to his chest and your head tucked perfectly into the hollow of his throat. You whined at the loss of his lips on yours and he chuckled, the feel rumbling through you.

“The lights aren’t this bright very often. We should enjoy it while we can,” he scolded.

You looked up at him, his profile rising above you, glowing in the night and completely serene, a truly magical sight, countering the very solid, real feel of his hold on you to create a strange certainty that he was indeed an otherworldly being, but he was yours and if he wasn’t real than neither were you. Comforted by the odd thought and by him, you smiled, turning back to watch the sky. And for at least a moment, everything was perfect.

#inspired by Klaus's line about having a yurt where they could go hide out #mild angst #but mostly fluff #Klaus Hargreeves x Reader #The Umbrella Academy fic #self-indulgent nonsense #I should have just called it 'Yurt' and been done with it #even though the actual yurt only plays a small role #implied Hargreeves!reader #I know basically nothing about Iceland other than it's one of the best places to see the northern lights. sorry if it's wildly inaccurate

[talldarkandroguesome]

22nd of Hearthfire, Middas

I have never considered the Redoran to be a particular deceptive House. My respect for playing the game when few other Houses considered them capable.

Yet what they have done, even just that small contingent, is beyond mere reproach.

After I joined up with Naryu and Veya and learned more, it came out that Verya was actually Naryu’s apprentice.

I can see why. There is some personality resemblance between Veya and Naryu back in her younger days. I am sure that seeing a younger version of herself she was happy to take on the role of mentor.

All I can say is, I am glad that it is not me. Can you imagine? Me? With an apprentice?

Boethiah’s breasts and bullocks, what a disaster that would be!

All of that aside, it turns out that the group of Velothi I was warned off was not at all Velothi. They were not even Dunmer! More of those Khajiit mercenaries.

Veya explained that her brother was very close to the Velothi that had made their home in the same encampment. Suddenly things were beginning to make sense. 

So Veya’s brother was exiled for killing one of his mer, who was likely threatening the Velothi people. Honestly, he does sound as much of an upstanding mer as everyone says he is. At least someone in prominence is looking out for the Velothi. 

Well... was. I supposed he was somewhere else now.

So we decided to try and investigate, for as Veya explained, this was the Zainab camp and their yurts were still in place, even if the only people we saw were the Warclaw mercenaries.

I asked if Naryu and Veya had a plan and was told that as members of the Morag Tong, they were not allowed to get involved. No writ, no ability to start taking lives otherwise. Veya seemed particularly frustrated by this, so I reassured them that I would be their proxy and I would learn what I could and if lives needed to be taken, I would do so in their stead, still in our Prince’s name.

So they stayed out of sight and I went ahead and snuck into the camp.

It was far easier than expected, I rarely had to use my shadows at all and easily was able to slip between the tents and I was able to easily pluck Redoran orders to the Warclaws and even find one of the wise woman that had been held hostage.

She was able to verify that they were, in fact, Zainab. She also confirmed that Ulran had come to be with them once he was exiled for saving the life of several of the tribesmer.

When I asked what had happened to the rest of the tribe, she said that most of them had been rounded up and thrown into the mine for resisting captivity. One of the mercenaries had the key, but she told me where they kept their backup key in the board of a small table and I promised her by True Tribunal that I would do whatever I could to free her people and to kill those responsible. 

She thanked me and asked me to make sure that the leader in particular was made to pay.

With her blessing, I decided there was no more need to hold back and once I had the key securely in my possession, I slay every soul that lay between myself and the mine, taking special care to see that their leader was brought to justice.

I normally would have attempted to make it a more painful death, to share the suffering that he caused ninefold. Yet I was eager to free the Velothi prisoners and reunite Veya and Ulran. I figured if we were to get to the bottom of the Redoran conspiracy, he would be the key.

As I approached the mine, I overheard two of the mercenaries talking while I crept behind them, blades drawn. They had been given leave to dispose of everyone in the mine by the captain, who I can only assume meant the Redoran captain. I did not even spend the time to kill those two, merely hit them with poisoned needles and rushed on, now with the threat of death far greater, I needed to rescue everyone before the Warclaws succeeded.

As I opened the door to the mine, I could already smell smoke. I wrapped a cloth round my face as I ran, hurrying towards the smell. If I could save anyone at all, I was going to do so. I swore by Azura’s guiding stars that I would lay down as many of my lives as it took, if I could save even one soul.

Yet as I reached the back room of the mine, my heart sank. A cold, sick feeling settled in my throat as I gazed upon my failure.

So many lives. So many innocent lives.

And among the bodies, I could clearly make out the body of Ulran. We were too late.

The room was silent and still. the only sound was my own pulse thrumming in my ears.

Then I heard Veya asking Naryu about the smell, I turned, trying to stop them, even as I heard Naryu, in recognition of the same smell, trying to stop Veya from entering.

It was too late for that too. And she all too easily recognized her brother’s corpse.

Her heart-wrenching cries as she screamed for her brother to wake up were almost more than I could bear. I knew that feeling, too. And I could not help but be brought back to that Daedric ruin, the scent of fresh blood, Avon’s begging for us both to stop, Ervis’ body sliding off of my sword to the ground, eyes still glaring at me, wishing for my death.

I can imagine what it feels like to lose a brother you care so deeply for. To wish you could do something, anything to take it all back.

Naryu pulled me aside and we agreed that it was awful that Veya had to see all of this. And we wondered what it was that we could to help Veya get the answers that she certainly would need more now than ever.

Then I spotted a small object on the ground. It was some sort of small rock, but out of place with the stone of the mine. I picked it up and Naryu came to see what it was. She recognized it instantly as a Nord speaking stone, a sort of memory recording device. I had seen others, though of Dunmeri make, and as soon as she said as much, I realized how foolish I was not to have seen it at once.

Naryu activated it and an image of Ulran began to speak.

Even in his last moments, the one thing he wanted was to give his sister answers. It was exactly as an older brother should do. He explained that one of his soldiers had been harassing a group of Velothi, who rumor had it were being belligerent in town. When Ulran had told the man to stand down, the soldier had slayed one of the Velothi. When Ulran tried to reprimand him, he approached another of the Velothi, sword raised. In order to stop the slaying, he turned to the only option available to him, and killed his own man.

The repercussions of the action were that he was brought before the Council and exiled, even before having a chance to say farewell to Veya. He also said he suspected that he was set up by someone in the House, though he did not know who. The Velothi had taken him in, but then Captain Brivan had shown up with soldiers. He had made the recording just in case things happened. It was sadly prophetic of him to assume it may be his last message.

Veya was enraged. Partially from the grief of her brother being gone and part for the role her own House played in the affair. I agreed with her, as did Naryu, that he did not deserve to die. That he was a good man, upstanding, and followed his convictions to the end.

She cursed that quality if it was what got him killed and swore vengeance. I knew that rage and I knew what it could bring. If the Morag Tong were not allowed to involve themselves without a writ, surely this would be far worse. After all, the reason why myself and others of the Houses’ prominent families are generally barred admission, is because of the conflict of interest it poses. You cannot be impartial if you have loyalties or grudges with various Houses. This was clearly a personal grudge and one that the Morag Tong would not look lightly at.

Naryu cursed Ulran for putting so much pressure on Veya when she was already hurting, though she agreed that it seemed like a set up. I agreed.

We decided we needed to get to the bottom of things. Naryu cursed the fact that it meant going up against House Redoran without a writ to protect them. I said I understood, Redoran was the House my own was most closely connected with and if I was found to be working against them, it could start a House war between our closest ally.

Even still, I agreed to help. I had come this far and since I had failed to protect the majority of the Zainab tribe, the least I could do was to see that they were not blamed for some House scheme. I would protect them as best as I could from within the House political system. If I learned more about the rumors of a Nerevarine in the interim, that would be a bonus. 

We all headed back to the safe house and pondered our next move. Naryu suggested that we make sure that the Councilmer know the truth of his son’s death and we decided that it would be best for it to come written in Veya’s hand so that he would believe us.

Then, so that their safety could be maintained, I agreed to deliver the message to Councilor Eris. Naryu lent me some clothing she had in the Redguard style and I made liberal use of the veil. I padded out undergarments to make myself wider and hunched in my shoulders. I adapted my gait and slowed my movements, then slipped out.

I gave myself a slight limp and when I had finally convinced my way in to meet with the Councilor, I spoke with a slight lisp. I explained that I came with news of his children. It was enough to get his attention. He asked if his daughter had been found and I said the news concerned his son.

He seemed rather surprised, since he was under the impression his son was no longer on Vvardenfell at all. I broke the news gently that his son was killed in a raid by his own captain upon the Zainab camp. He found this hard to believe. So I gave him the letter from Veya and said she had sent me to bring it after she had seen it for herself and that I was to make sure he got the news.

Understandably, he was shaken as he read the contents and knew the handwriting to be Veya’s own.

He asked if I could do him a favor, which I agreed to. It took him a while to come to a decision, but after visibly wrestling with his options, he asked if I could make sure that Veya stayed away until everything settled down. That he would do his best to contain the chaos. He asked me to ensure that she was safe. He even paid me to do so.

I bowed formally and told him I would do my best and then I left. Ashur spotted me, seemed a bit surprised and then made a hand signal for me to meet up three blocks up ahead.  I made sure to go down an alley and turn invisible to make sure that no one was tracking me. I did not want to be followed and lead anyone back to the last remaining safety that Veya and Naryu possessed. Then, I removed my outer garments and tucked them round the stomach before going to meet Ashur just up the road.

After a brief conversation, it turns out that Naryu had a business matter to see to and that he was struggling to help comfort Veya and asked if I might be of assistance. I agreed and we headed back to the safe house. 

When we first arrived, it was clear how upset Veya was. Not just about her brother, but also about not being allowed to go with Naryu. It was worse than Ashur had said.

I sang a song which helped her to fall asleep. I know it will not last long, but when so many things have happened, sometimes even a short rest can be healing. I know she will wake soon and I need to be prepared, a rest will mean she will also have more energy. I just wish there was more that I could do for her. I will just have to try my best.

#ESO #TES #RP #Dunmer #Elder Scrolls Online #The Elder Scrolls

[lisarichardsonbylines]

Closing the Gap

THE PROBLEM SOLVERS

» UNICEF: CLOSING THE GAP

UNICEFCLOSING THE GAP

Arc'teryx lends their understanding of insulation and extreme conditions to a global collaborative effort in Mongolia.

Words By: Lisa Richardson

Closing the Gap

Inspired by problem-solvers in our midst and beyond, Arc’teryx designers accept an invitation from UNICEF’s Office of Innovation to head to Mongolia, to the coldest capital city in the world, to lend their understanding of insulation and extreme conditions to a global collaborative effort to make the ger, a type of shelter utilized by half a million urban residents, more thermally efficient. The problem: tackling the child health crisis caused by coal-fired air pollution from a terrific number of heat-leaking gers. The solution? Close the gaps that let good ideas fall by the wayside and let the cold air in.

Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, the coldest capital city in the world is powered entirely by coal, which means it is now, despite only having a population of 1.5 million people, also the most polluted capital city in the world.

It was just an email, like any other email that comes into the machine shop at Arc’teryx where the tinkering team of Pat, Bill and Chris wizard up solutions, customize tools and make whatever needs to be made for Arc’teryx designers to do their work. Pat Fitzsimmons happened to be sitting in the “Open Emails” chair that day when he fielded a request from senior design developer Nathalie Marchand to help make a door.

The Land of the Blue Sky shifts to charcoal grey at the onset of winter when coal-fired stoves begin to churn out fine particulate matter in toxic quantities.

Fitzsimmons is a hands-on problem-solver. You need a door? He’ll run down to RONA, pick up a door, cut it in half, MacGyver it to the specs you need. And that’s what he thought he was saying yes to when he added “door for Nathalie” to his action list that day. He had no idea he was about to step onto a global team tackling child health 8,186 km away in the most polluted capital city in the world.

Mid-winter in Ulaanbaatar, temperatures plunge to -40°C, and in response, the 1.5 million residents burn coal by the ton to keep warm.

The air in Ulaanbaatar was not always like this. But when Mongolia transitioned from Soviet control to a free market democracy in 1990, massive waves of urban migration began, tripling the size of the city; 8,000 new households are still arriving each year. As the new population pitch their yurts, the traditional round felt tent dwelling the Mongolians call ger, haphazardly up and down the hillsides of the city’s outskirts, their collective cooking and heating with unrefined coal stoves ramps up the city’s air pollution to shocking levels.

Click and hold52% of the pollution in Ulaanbaatar is attributable to coal burning in the ger district.

The amount of carcinogenic fine particulate matter (PM2.5, meaning particulate matter with a diameter of 2.5 microns or less) has gone off-the-charts, and with it, acute respiratory infections (bronchitis, asthma, and pneumonia), preterm births, and spontaneous abortions. This 2.5 particulate matter in the air is small enough not only to enter the bloodstream but also cross the blood-brain barrier, and has reached concentration levels (millionths of a gram per cubic metre) more than 12 times higher than World Health Organization (WHO) standards.

In short: Breathing toxic air is damaging brain tissue and impairing cognitive development in babies and children. When it’s not killing them.

IN 2015, 435 CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF FIVE IN ULAANBAATAR DIED FROM PNEUMONIA.The mountains surrounding Ulaanbaatar's river valley trap smog like soup in a pan. By January, even the stars disappear.

In February 2018, UNICEF and the National Centre for Public Health sounded the alarm with a report, Mongolia’s Air Pollution Crisis: A Call to Action to Protect Children’s Health. Because, while everyone knew about the pollution, no one had connected the dots to child and maternal health. The issue of the day was suddenly a sleeping time-bomb – the hidden financial costs and lasting health and neurological impacts on children was going to cost Mongolia its future.

A morning prayer offered to the sky, across the sacred Tuul river from the city's power plants.

It’s a massive problem with no easy solution, and that’s just the kind of challenge that Tanya Accone rolls up her sleeves for.

“I’m an almost irrational optimist,” says Tanya Accone, Senior Advisor on Innovation for UNICEF’s Office of Innovation.

She has to be. Her role means confronting, daily, in detail, the world’s most intractable problems.

Trucks and vendors hawk coal from the four-lane main street to families in the ger district. Coal is available by the dump load or by the bag. No other source of heat is available.

The Office of Innovation is a recent branch of the 70 year United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) – an agile collaboration that applies start-up thinking and technology and leverages UNICEF’s deep web of connections and relationships on the ground in 243 countries to generate innovative and scalable solutions for children.

“We need to become disruptive and try things that are radically different,” says Accone, and in Mongolia, that meant trying to literally change the atmosphere.

While Ulaanbattar’s pollution has been attributed to the city’s 4 coal power plants, 3200 low pressure steam boilers, and 505,000 cars and buses, at least half is caused by the inefficient attempts of the continually growing number of households in the ger district to stay warm through the winter.

UNICEF’s plan was to task a global team of experts to “redesign” the ger to make it more thermally efficient – something they could roll out, not just in Ulaanbaatar, but across Mongolia and beyond, to Kazahkstan and Tajikistan - other places where urbanization and air pollution were spreading.

But first, Accone had to pull together a team of problem-solvers.

And that’s how Arc’teryx got a call from UNICEF Canada. “We are beginning a design project involving insulation in a hostile environment. We’re hoping you can help.”

Walls of lattice and felt echo a three thousand year old tradition of self-sufficiency and attunement with the land. How could the design be adapted for 21st century realities?

When Senior Design Developer Nathalie Marchand sat down in the room in Ulaanbaatar in March 2018, alongside colleague Romy Paterson, Material Developer, as the Arc’teryx dream team on the “21stCentury Ger” project, she was so intimidated she could hardly speak.

The global think-tank that the Office of Innovation had pulled together included genius-types from Stanford University, the architecture firm Kieran Timberlake, the Center for Environmental Building and Design at the University of Pennsylvania, GerHub and a host of UNICEF representatives.

Marchand went to fashion design school, before joining the circus at 21, where she worked for ten years as head of wardrobe for Canada’s legendary Cirque de Soleil. At Arc’teryx, she’s a guru. But when she walked into that gathering, she was a long way out of her comfort zone and completely without armour – no sewing machine, no track record, no PhD. “I felt extremely dumb,” says the tri-lingual Marchand. “They were all academics. I was super intimidated.”

She’d had three weeks to do the most basic youtube research before landing in Ulaanbaatar. “I have been camping in a tent before. That’s about as much as I knew about the ger.”

While tiny homes take North America by storm, Mongolians looking to get a toehold in an exploding city real estate market turn to dwelling of their nomadic ancestors, the light-weight and affordable ger.

Marchand’s don’t-know mind is her superpower, though. “My main strength in my job is just to ask the questions: what do you need, what you do want, what’s working, what’s not working. There were a lot of PhDs in that room who knew quite a bit. But what we thought we knew about Mongolia, and the real Mongolia, are quite different. We were sitting in a meeting talking about what is comfortable and suddenly we realized we have no idea what is comfortable in a ger. We think 20 degrees is a comfortable temperature inside in the winter. When I actually visited a ger, I could have been sitting in my bathing suit. It was so hot.”

As she asked questions, it became apparent that her and Paterson’s fabric knowledge wasn’t going to help. Gore-tex is not available or affordable to Mongolians. Felt is. It’s a perfectly adapted insulation for the conditions. As the think-tank members divided up the different aspects of the ger that might be re-engineered according to their expertise, the door remained.

“I went there knowing nothing and I left knowing only that I wanted to work on the project. I wanted to help people who might not have the resources we do. I had the chance to use my knowledge to change someone’s life.”

MARCHAND PUT HER HAND UP TO TAKE HOME THE DOOR.The data bank. Six test gers measure the effectiveness of a host of measures designed to retain heat.

There was no chance Canada Customs was going to let her ship a wood door home. So Marchand spent an extra week in Mongolia, using personal vacation time to journey out onto the steppe with a local guide, staying with families in their gers, playing cards, drinking vodka, and eating more dumplings than she hopes to ever again. She took dozens of photos of the gaps that formed between the doors and the sill plates, the gaps around the edges of the felt tent - all the leaky openings that formed with daily wear and tear that allow the bitterness of winter to finger its way in.

She needed to conceive a way to close the air gap. With the average salary in Mongolia at 966,000 tugruk, roughly $CAD520, it had to be cheap, easy to install, and easy to make.

Humility meets collaboration. Nathalie Marchand and Patrick Fitzsimmons prove the power of approaching a problem with a don't-know-mind and a great partner-in-crime.

Marchand had a flash of insight, remembering her five-year-old self visiting her grandmother in Quebec, where the winter temperatures hover around -20°C. She remembered the “snake” that her grandmother would kick along the door jamb, a long fabric tube filled with sand to block the draft.

After she returned to the Arc’teryx North Vancouver design headquarters, Pat Fitzsimmons answered her call for help, injecting something else to the project, something she hadn’t realized she needed: enthusiasm, a voice to counter the one in her head that said this solution is too simple; this problem is too big; this process is too unwieldy; how can you be sure that the Mongolians will accept this; who do you think you are?

To help, Nathalie Marchand had to first battle her own inner critic: who am I to offer help to Mongolia?

“When you work alone on a project and only have yourself to talk to, you get to a point where you feel like you’ve gone around so many times. When Pat came along, he went from 0 to 100 in a minute, he was so excited. It was amazing.”

Fitzsimmons reassured her that the simplicity of the snake was just right. Then he built her a door that she set between her cutting table and her sewing machine. Fitzsimmons didn’t think of it as a door. “It was a portal. You walk from 2019 into three thousand years ago, into this tiny enclave of beliefs, this building that reflects spiritually who the Mongolians are, as a people and as a nation.”

Marchand then also designed an insulated curtain, made from accordioned cardboard and covered with reflective fabric, that could be pulled across the door at night like a shower curtain, to add an extra layer of insulation.

“It had to be quiet, because everyone sleeps in the same room so if you wake up in middle of the night and have to go outside, you want it to be silent. You want to be able to use it with only one hand.” Every time she moved from her table to her sewing machine, she had to open the door and slide wide the curtain - testing the friction of operating it fifty times a day.

The refined specs of her door insulation package were emailed to UNICEF’s Mongolian office to be reproduced by a team from local materials. Eleven gers were going to be tested through the winter of 2018-19 – six uninhabited gers at a test site out of the city would be outfitted with all the different interventions, so each variable could be measured and monitored. Five family gers in the ger district would also be part of the testing.

On paper, it looked as if Marchand had solved the door insulation gap. Now someone just had to translate it into real life.

8,186 KILOMETRES AWAY IN ULAANBAATAR, IN OCTOBER, MUNKH-ORGIL (“MO”) LKHAGVA WENT LOOKING FOR A SEAMSTRESS.Arc'teryx could generate design solutions, but they had to translate on the ground.

An adaptable and personable 38 year old, Lkhagva had taught himself English from a good dictionary and had been hired by UNICEF’s local partner, Gerhub, to turn piles of drawings into the six test gers, ready for data-collecting to start in November.

It was an ambitious timeline, that didn’t exactly accommodate the realities of life - or the heinous traffic - in Mongolia. “I’ve never sewn anything in my life,” said Lkhagva. “I’m just able to understand English.” He posted ads on the Mongolian equivalent of craigslist, and visited a local sewing school, before the professor, a tiny fierce woman told him pointedly that none of her students would have the skills to do what he needed, but that she could probably help. He visited her tiny studio, a poorly ventilated room with peeling linoleum, bedecked with old fashion magazine cut-outs showcasing Soviet flair, an ancient sewing machine as the centrepiece. He showed her the drawings. She seemed to understand.

Naran Tuul, the Black Market in Ulaanbaatar, provides everything you need to build a ger.Testing the first prototype on the ground, only to discover that some things got lost in translation.

As far as Marchand could tell, it was working. “Mo was fantastic. He took pictures of everything that was available. If we said we needed a hook, next day he would go to their equivalent of Home Depot and take pictures of all the available hooks and say this is what’s out there.”

No one could know that the seamstress had got it wrong, until Marchand and Fitzsimmons arrived back in Ulaanbaatar in January for the second think-tank gathering and to check on the installation of their door insulation package. It seemed less an issue of the designs not having made sense to her, as that there was a Canadian at the other end of it. What could a Canadian possibly know about a Mongolian institution?

They gathered up the useless pieces and went looking for another sewing machine.

The air quality index read 963 parts per million (ppm) in January 2019. It had been 15 ppm in North Vancouver when Fitzsimmons left home. (Anything above 100 ppm is considered dangerous.) “Until you're standing in the middle of it,” Fitzsimmons said of the problem he’d just spent six months obsessing about, “you can’t understand how atrocious it is.”

He wanted to hate it. “Everywhere you go, it smells like burnt stuff. The smoke is terrible. There are so many problems. I wanted to be full of darkness towards the whole pollution thing -- you have to be angry to fix something. But my God! The country! The people! The beautiful sky!” He fell in rhapsodic love.

They’d come up with the best start they could conceive. All they needed now was a workshop to actually build their snakes and curtains. Happily, one of the think-tank invitees, an inventor, yurt-builder and Dutch emigrant, Froit Vanderharst took them under his wing. They ducked out of the formal sessions and raced to the open air market in Ulaanbaatar for supplies, time slipping away.

Sweating and exhilarated at having found such a like-minded fellow problem-solver. Stripped down to shirt sleeves despite sub-zero temperatures, they banged out prototypes, Marchand labouring over the sewing machine. They couldn’t wait for the prototypes to be installed, to show them to locals, hear what people thought.

"Everywhere you go, it smells like burnt stuff. I wanted to be full of darkness towards the pollution, but my God! The people!" Pat Fitzsimmons trades anger for love as his motivating force.

By early June 2019, the University of Pennsylvania had made headway with the thousands of data points they’d collected over the winter.

The comprehensive package of better insulation, including the door’s curtain and snake, resulted in a 55% reduction in energy consumption.

Tanya Accone, UNICEF Mongolia Deputy Representative Speciose Hakizimana and their team, were unequivocal about the results: “That is a game-changer.”

SUDDENLY, CLEAN AIR IS WITHIN GRASP.An air of optimism landed when the project team read the results. Clean air is within grasp.Adapting to massive issues requires a combination of technology, collaboration and respect for traditional ways.

“The magnitude of the problem and its impact on children and pregnant women is huge. But in combination with electric heating and cooking, the data suggests it should be possible to completely phase out the use of coal heating gers,” wrote Hakizimana on behalf of the UNICEF Mongolia team in late June, 2019. Expectations are as high as the stakes, and with more partners coming on board, including the Swiss government, the Dutch government, the Manitoba Council for International Cooperation, and the Mongolian University of Science and Technology, the pressure on everyone involved is immense. But there’s an air of optimism around the expanding office.

"A problem is only a problem if you see it as that. It could be a different pathway, a different route, an opportunity. It's only a problem if you let it be."

This winter, the project relocates to the second-most polluted city in Mongolia, Bayankhongor, 640km east of Ulaanbaatar, where the governor is extremely motivated to make a dent on air pollution in his urbanizing city, and is collaborating with UNICEF to meet a target of clean air by 2022. By rolling out energy-saving prototypes in many of the 7000 ger and brick houses (baishin) of this smaller city of just 9600 households, the team will be able to really prove their case of what works and what doesn’t.

Open the door to possibility. On the other side: history. And hope.

“We brought together industry experts in design, technology, outdoor, architecture, and academics,” reflected Hakizamana. “All the partners contributed immensely in building prototypes, data monitoring, and creating energy and structure solutions. We’re seeing the benefits of this great collaboration already. Now we will combine these with local knowledge and solutions, and help move households from coal to clean energy solutions.”

“Everywhere I look, here at Arc’teryx, I’m building on other people’s work,” mused Fitzsimmons. “We’ve had some incredible people through here that have done amazing things and I get to work with the results of their work, but I don’t know their names. Imagine if the legacy of this project is a population of people who are healthier, free of this thing they’re struggling with, with a real good shot at a fine future, and that comes about through something that my friend Nathalie and I had a part in creating? A chance to make a difference in history for all those people? Holy crap. It just doesn’t get better than that.”

https://arcteryx.com/us/en/explore/problem-solvers/unicef/