In the years that followed, my eyes returned to contemplate the desert expanses and the caravan routes; but now I know this is only one of the many roads that opened before me that morning in Dorothea.
Note
Dorothea can be described in two ways. With numbers: four aluminium towers, seven gates with spring drawbridges, a moat that feeds four green canals, nine quarters of three hundred houses and seven hundred chimneys, and the goods each family holds in monopoly. Or like the camel driver who brought the narrator there, who arrived young, one morning.
The scene is an exact model: the towers, the gates, the canals, the nine quarters tinted by their monopolies, the surveyor’s ticks all around. Brides cross from quarter to quarter over the little bridges; now and then a drawbridge lowers.
Touch a gate: the bridge drops and a caravan comes in, heading for the market by one of the many roads and leaving a saffron trail. Touch it again: the road will be another. The numbers tell everything about the city, except which way you will go.
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.