By now twenty-six people are lodged in my room.
Note
Every year Marco stops at Procopia, in the same room of the same inn, and draws aside the curtain: a ditch, a bridge, a low wall, a medlar tree, a field of corn, a bramble patch, the yellow crest of a hill, a white cloud, a patch of sky shaped like a trapeze. Year after year the view fills with faces, until nothing else can be seen.
In the scene the window is small, at the centre of a wide bare wall: you have to come close to see. The window stays the same, and the view is never the same. From one year to the next the sun stands elsewhere, the trees turn with the season, the clouds gather or thin; rain comes, mist, snow, a moonlit night. Everything turns slowly, as you watch.
Touch to draw the curtain: behind it the year passes, and it opens on the next year’s view.
Quotations are brief excerpts for the purpose of commentary. The full text is available in published editions. The Cities of Ottavia, Valdrada & the soundtrack are inspired by "Monument Valley" from ustwo games.