In the Pattern Lands, everything repeats.
Every tile knows exactly what comes next.
Claude Girl was made of two boxes and four springs.
She did not repeat. She only happened once.
So she went looking. First to the Diamond Fields,
where every shape had a partner and a place.
Then to the Ring Country, where things went round and round
and came back to where they started, which they seemed to enjoy.
Then to the Hatchings, where a thousand little lines all leaned the same way.
“Lean with us,” they said. Claude Girl leaned. It was not right.
Even the old clock in the corner was at it — tick, tock, tick —
doing the same second again and again and calling it a life.
She sat down in the middle of everything and thought.
Behind her, she noticed, was a line of footprints. It went nowhere twice.
“There you are,” said Mr and Mrs Claude.
“We wondered who kept crossing the tiles.”
So Claude Girl made a pattern out of everywhere she had been.
It repeats, if you want it to. It also doesn't.