It takes everything I am
tick tick tick
Everyone who passes through his shop thinks and says that the watches are nothing but clockwork. Pretty, yes, functional, yes, perhaps even admired and coveted, but just empty gears and meaningless motion.
They don't get it.
The watches talk, the gears banter, the crystals flirt, and he's the only one who listens, who understands. The beauty in the parts themselves is only a fraction of it, the expression of grace and fitting and completion tell more than he can find words to say.
Not that it matters, because they've stopped listening in a way that's more than polite and perfunctory by that point anyway.
The ability to understand anything he wants to drives him mad in its scope. He thinks he could cure cancer if he tried.
He doesn't want to try.
He can barely keep it under control as is. So he focuses on the detail behind the detail, the minute beyond the minute. The parts are arrayed in a spread arc before him and the instruments have already found their way into his willing grasp.
Tick.
He listens.
Tick.
He focuses, starting the conversation between his hands and the gears.
Tick.
He fixes.