You reach a moment in life when, among the people you have known, the dead outnumber the living.
Note
Marco reaches Adelma at dusk and on the quay recognises, in the sailors and the fishwives, people he had known who are dead. Perhaps Adelma is the city where one arrives dying and finds again those one has known. The mind has a limit of faces: past it, every new face is printed on an old one. And he fears the moment they will recognise him too.
In the scene the faces are lanterns along the quay, each with a glass in one of only nine patterns; above the harbour hang the nine remembered. Out of the haze come boats with new lanterns, and every new lantern repeats a pattern already known.
Touch a lantern: all those that resemble it light up together, joined to the memory in the sky. Touch the water, and a memory answers you too.
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.