Constants
As the end approached, the shapes of the world began to change.
Her little life had taught her so. Whenever rest and peace came closer, the way home looked the longest — it claimed a little more strength, swayed by the wind, before she could lie down.
And it was no different, it seemed, in the valley of treasures. The palaces were split in more and more faces, ever still, yet alive in their minute harmony. Their profiles, noble and open to her eyes alone, glimmered with jewels of water and ceramic.
Their alphabet was getting softer, their lines smoother. They began spiraling in between her moves, leading her up to the heavens.
It grew closer to perfection with every shape she gave back; the world followed, wherever the high mountains did not block her view. The corners of nature she was led to were beauty in the flesh, rolling generously throughout her field of vision. It was true for the song of the wind and the chiselled sand, for the eager mouth of the waterfalls that devoured the gorge.
She was losing sight of the beginning. The more she moved, the less they were visible — the rough lines and angles of a primal geometry multiplied, tirelessly, to melt together in round shapes.
It truly worked that way. Ida knew what to expect. The last secret to return to the land would be a perfect sphere.
She walked on, in serene atonement, with the flow of rules that was rebuilding the valley.
Even so, she did not lose the traces of the past. It was just like the Storytellers had said; there was no linear direction in knowledge and time. Some things would always stay, regardless of what her footsteps would leave behind — some images and connections, like the airy ones that bound souls to one another.
A perfect square. The shape never grew old, not even when the valley most resembled the milky skin of the moon. It followed Ida all along, in the increasing touch of perfection — it jumped and ran to her as she pleased, it fell for her, leaving her in tears as it joined tumbling waters.
It chose to return, even after that. She found perfect squares in the mirror of the water, when fingers of ice enclosed a near-perfect world like lace. She put them together with her own hands, eager to meet those eyes once more.
Four cubes, blue lines, two circles. It was a simple, primitive shape, yet it was essential — without it, she could never make the world complete again.
That was the shape she needed when she climbed the stairs to the infinite, armed with her resolve to give back. Of that, however, she refused to let go in her heart.
It was the shape of her dearest friend, and it meant more than the finest geometry.
A homage to Forgotten Shores, Monument Valley's new DLC. Thank you, ustwogames, for showing us one more fragment of your enchanted story!