Bevan returned to the workshop the following day, and the day after that, each time finding some plausible groundskeeping reason to pass through the lower science wing that Briar, increasingly, suspected was more excuse than necessity. He did not mind the company nearly as much as he might have expected to.
BVN: Made too much again.
He said it the same way each time, setting a cloth-wrapped bundle down on the corner of Briar's cluttered worktable, and unwrapped it to reveal considerably more bread and cheese than any single groundskeeper's midday meal reasonably required.
BRR: You keep saying that.
BVN: It keeps being true.
BRR: You're a terrible liar.
BVN: Never claimed to be a good one.
He said it with the particular easy, unbothered honesty that seemed to define most of his conversation, and settled onto his usual overturned crate, breaking off a portion of the bread and holding it out toward Briar without further ceremony. Briar took it, because refusing at this point would have required more energy than accepting, and because, if he was honest with himself, the quiet company had become something he looked forward to across the otherwise solitary stretch of each day.
BVN: How's the device coming along.
BRR: Slowly. I've rebuilt the essence conduit three times now. The connection keeps destabilizing whenever I push past the original threshold.
BVN: Sounds frustrating.
BRR: It is, rather.
He chewed thoughtfully on the bread, considering the tangle of copper and crystal still sitting on his worktable, its careful construction now marked with several small burns from previous, unsuccessful attempts.
BRR: I keep thinking I'm close. Then I test it, and I'm not, and I have to start the whole calculation over from somewhere further back than I'd like.
BVN: How close is close, exactly?
BRR: I don't fully know. That's rather the problem with foresight. I can't simply look ahead and confirm whether the thing I'm building will actually work. The ability doesn't work that way. It only shows me what's already going to happen, not what depends on choices I haven't made yet.
He said it with the particular weary specificity of someone who had spent considerable time wishing his own gift worked differently than it actually did, and Bevan, listening, nodded slowly, chewing his own portion of bread with unhurried thoughtfulness.
BVN: Must be strange. Carrying a gift like that.
BRR: It's mostly inconvenient. Two minutes ahead, a few seconds at a time, once an hour if I push it. I've used it to avoid stepping in mud puddles more often than I've used it for anything genuinely important.
BVN: That's not nothing.
BRR: It's not much, either.
Bevan considered this, tearing off another piece of bread, his expression thoughtful in the particular unhurried way that seemed to define most of his considerations.
BVN: Suppose the question's not really how big the gift is. Suppose it's what a person does with whatever size it happens to be.
BRR: That's what I'm trying to do. Make it bigger.
BVN: Is that the only way to do something with it, though?
Briar looked up from his bread, something in the question snagging at a part of his mind he hadn't previously turned toward it.
BRR: What do you mean?
BVN: Only, you're trying to stretch the gift itself. Longer looking, further seeing. Nothing wrong with that, if it works. But there's other ways to make a small thing matter more, besides making the thing itself bigger.
BRR: Such as?
BVN: Getting cleverer about when you use it, maybe. Or what you use it for. A gift that shows you two minutes ahead, once an hour, isn't much use for most things. But there might be a handful of moments where two minutes, used exactly right, matters more than two hours would in the wrong one.
He said it plainly, without any particular weight of insistence behind it, simply an observation offered and left to settle however it settled, and returned his attention to his own meal, apparently entirely comfortable letting the thought sit unpursued if Briar chose not to follow it. Briar sat with it for a long while, chewing slowly, turning the idea over from several different angles.
BRR: You might be onto something.
BVN: Might be. Might not. I'm just an old groundskeeper who talks too much to whoever's willing to share his lunch.
BRR: I don't think that's entirely accurate.
BVN: No? What do you think it is, then?
Briar considered the question honestly, looking at the older man across the cluttered workshop, the easy patience of him, the particular quiet wisdom he seemed to dispense without ever making it feel like a lesson.
BRR: I think you're considerably wiser than you let on.
Bevan laughed, a warm, unhurried sound that filled the small workshop pleasantly.
BVN: Maybe. Or maybe I've just had a long while to sit with disappointment about my own gift, and picked up a thing or two about making peace with limitations along the way. Comes to the same thing, in the end, I suppose.
He finished the last of his bread, brushed the crumbs from his hands, and rose, gathering his tools back over his shoulder with the particular unhurried motion of someone who had never once been in a rush across his entire life.
BVN: I'll bring more tomorrow. Seems to be helping, whatever else it's doing.
BRR: It is. Thank you.
BVN: Don't mention it. Genuinely. I'd only feel obligated to say something modest in response, and that takes more effort than either of us needs to spend on it.
He left with a small, easy wave, and Briar, alone again in the workshop, looked back at his damaged prototype with something that felt, for the first time in days, less like frustration and more like curiosity, the particular reawakened interest of someone who had just been handed a genuinely new angle to consider. He picked up his notes and began, slowly, to sketch something different in the margins.