Those who arrive at Thekla can see little of the city, beyond the plank fences, the sackcloth screens, the scaffoldings, the ladders. Work stops at sunset: the sky fills with stars, and “there is the blueprint,” they say.
Note
Thekla is a city that never finishes building itself, hidden behind fences and scaffolding; ask why construction takes so long and the workers answer that this is so its destruction cannot begin, and ask to see the plan and they say it will be shown once the working day ends. At nightfall the sky fills with stars, and that is the plan.
The scene takes that literally: the site’s own joints become the sky’s stars, and the same beams that brace the timber below trace faint lines above, so the blueprint is not kept in some office but assembled, bay by bay, in the dark. By day the city is only scaffolding, cloth and slowly turning cranes; nothing is ever finished, because finishing was never the point.
Tap a tower to add another bay and watch a crane swing round to serve it, or tap the sky itself to call the working day to a close. Once the stars come out, touch one of the faint lines and it brightens, as if the plan, for a moment, remembered which timber it belonged to.
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.