Exploring the Cleft

I link back in and have to make that long trek back to the cleft. Uru doesn't allow saving games.

This time I go the long way around. Sure enough, there are things hidden behind the mountain: a skeleton recognizable from "Riven" as having come from a Wahrk, and the remains of the telescope Gehn built to observe the stars in the cleft.

I walk on. I've learned that I can run and jump, so I jump over some of the rocks in the area.

Yesterday's sculpture was a good one. My brain is running very slowly, classic post-sculptural syndrome, but I should be alert enough to figure this thing out.

Down in the rock cleft I amble around. They certainly didn't make it easy to get anyplace. In order to get from A to B you have to pass through Z, Q, M and W first.

At the end of one shelf there's some sort of mechanism. Pulling the lever does nothing but make a well-designed mechanical clunk. The sounds in this game are very good.

One shelf gives access to a room with a cryptic letter, apparently to Yeesha. She, or someone else, has written notes on it. None of it is comprehensible. Another shelf, gotten to through climbing and jumping, gives me entrance to another room with a handprint on the wall. This one lights up and makes a sound when I touch it.

Eventually i work my way around to the big room on the far side. There's a projector-type gadget sitting on one shelf and various other things lying around. Down some stairs is another room, in whose window I'd looked from outside. A lever in the floor releases clamps from around a shaft. That must be the windmill, but it doesn't start turning.

I go up to find out what's wrong. A lever protrudes from the windmill's vertical shaft. I give it a good shove and the windmill starts to turn, squeaking as it goes. I go back down and try the lever at the end of the shelf, and this time the machinery responds by lowering a box. I raise it again. What's this for? Water? Other stuff? I leave it behind, and then look back and just barely see a handprint on the side of it. I go back over, lower it, then climb down and touch the hand sign. It lights up. Was it bigger this time? I go to the one in the room and touch it, and it also seems bigger. Not sure, though.

Now the doors work to the big room. I go to the lower room and open its door, but nothing changes. Back in the upper room I find a circular sign on the wall that resembles the one on the projector, so I draw a picture of it and then compare.

Pushing buttons on the projector changes its symbols. I set the right combination and then press the big central button. Yeesha starts talking, and a ghostly figure appears. She walks out of my view. I'm used to the Riven style of video so it doesn't even occur to me to turn around to watch her, assuming I can't move and view at the same time. Things have changed in game land. Toward the end of her message I think about moving, and turn in time to see her disappear from near the wall.

Now, where'd that handprint come from? It wasn't there when I entered. I touch it and this time it'd definitely bigger. More of it lights up, including one finger. Aha. Four fingers, thumb, and what must be two segments in the palm. Seven segments. So I have to find three more.