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Billie has a list.
The list doesn’t have a title, at least, not on the piece of paper she’s using to keep it (the back of an old letter she’d never expected to become a permanent fixture). But if it did have a title, she’d often mused to herself, it would be something like:
“Billie’s list of Complications that arise from bringing an eldritch (and possibly formerly dead) god back to humanity”
She never felt the wording was quite right, though.
The list had started out innocently enough. Just a single mental bullet point:
• Seeing with old eyes the secrets of the world
And that was a spur-of-the-moment thing, something she’d had the foresight to steel herself against once the adrenaline had died down. Once they were away, and relatively safe, and they’d found somewhere to hole up, and he had slept for a long, long time. And she’d sat, thinking… not regretting, not for a moment, but suddenly hit with the feeling that she was in over her head.
It was a strange feeling, since she’d often had reason to feel that way, and had proven to herself again and again that she could handle it. She could adapt. She was smart, and she had skills. In many ways her life had been just one unforeseen complication after another, and she knew that, at least to some degree, her biggest skill was what she’d generously call ‘muddling through’.
Emotions and people, though, those had kept her up at night for a long time. She’d never quite got the hang of emotions; they never seemed to be good, and the bad ones never went away, just dulled. So, maybe waiting it out was also one of her skills.
But having Emily on her boat had been more than enough to show her that she was (again generously) ‘out of practice’, when it came to people, especially people in need of some kind of… guidance. She could do transaction, and she could do ‘grudging mother hen’ very well (thank you Sokolov), but a young, suddenly displaced figure of power coping with the sudden reality of everyday life? She wasn’t sure what she’d done, really, but somehow it hadn’t come back to bite her. At least, not from Emily herself.
Which brings her to her new… babysitting job. Not being sure what she did right with Emily was all well and good when she could just be grateful Emily apparently didn’t hate her as much as she hated herself (or at least, not enough to act on it), but now she was looking back, trying to figure out what exciting new skills she’d acquired in this area, and coming up, she had to admit, woefully empty.
So when he’d woken up, and she’d said something deadpan and wry about how it ‘must be strange’ not knowing what to do with his centuries of (now useless, and growing more out-of-date by the minute) knowledge about a world that he wasn’t ever going to get to see most of, she’d felt very proud of herself. Maybe she could ‘muddle through’ this one too.
Except, and here was the problem, she kept having to add to the list. Which meant, though it took her longer than it probably should have to admit it to herself, perhaps the title of her list should be more like:
“Billie’s list of Complications (foreseen and unforeseen) that arise from bringing an eldritch (and now somehow clueless) god back to humanity”
And on one side, the ‘foreseen Complications’ are listed as:
• Seeing with old eyes the secrets of the world
(The phrasing of that was really starting to get on her nerves, but it was what she’d said, so she kept it on principle. Also, it was written in pen.)
And on the other side… well, there was no end to it. Literally.
It had started as another mental note:
• Sunlight is too bright. Needs acclimatising.
The most insulting thing about that, of course, is that it really should have been on the ‘foreseen Complications’ side of things; it wasn’t like she hadn’t noticed his eyes changing. But she’d mentally shaken herself, and tried to figure out if it was early enough that she could still ‘technically’ count it as a ‘foreseen Complication’.
Of course, what he had said was something more along the lines of, “The World Is Made Up Of Endless Cycles, Unbreakable, Marching Onwards Through Time. Humanity Throws Itself Against The Barriers Of This Unseen Prison, Never Seeing The Futility, As They Are Blinded By The Very Mechanisms Of The Spheres That Keep Them In Line,”
But he’d said it several seconds after a toneless groan just after waking up, and all the while refusing to open his eyes until she closed what passed for curtains, so she’d been able to extrapolate.
(And really, she wasn’t going to write all that.)
But, she’d reasoned with herself, if he’d had to say it then she really couldn’t justify putting that under the ‘foreseen’ column, and took the liberties with phrasing as a compromise.
The one thing that was consistent about the hypothetical title to her list, in fact, was that the word ‘Complications’ was always written (in her head) with a capital ‘C’. Even when she’d, in a fit of boundless generosity, mentally changed it to a more neutral ‘Consequences’ or ‘Considerations’, or, in a fit of irritation, changed it again to ‘Crises’, it always had to have a capital. It just seemed right.
There was something about Bringing A Long-Dead God Back Into The World As A Clueless, Infant Human And, In Doing So, Remaking The Structure Of The World As We Know It that seemed to merit the word ‘Complications’, with a capital ‘C’.
The next thing, of course, on the ‘unforeseen’ side of the list, was:
• The Talking Thing
She’d reasoned with herself that, while maybe she should have foreseen that he’d be (generously) ‘a little out of practice’, and that maybe his way of talking to people as a Void Entity should have been ‘a red flag’ (less generous), she still wasn’t being unreasonable to have not foreseen it. She’d had no way of knowing that literally nothing would change about the way he uses words.
Of course, this was around the time when the list became a physical list that she’d actually written down (on the back of that old letter), and she’d wondered at that point whether she should somehow phrase that one in a nicer way. Or expand on it a little. Something more specific than just ‘The Talking Thing’ (or, at one point in her head, ‘The Talking Problem’).
But the thing was, it wasn’t just a matter of him never seeming to know what words to use to actually make sense to the people around him, and it wasn’t just a matter of turning everything into some kind of ‘philosophical nonsense’ (as she thought of it).
It wasn’t even that, on top of those, that thing he’d do where he’d randomly drop some personal information about the person he was speaking to (which, she still couldn’t tell if he knew how annoying that was, and anyway, that was covered by her singular ‘foreseen Complication’).
It was the fact that he was always so quiet she had to strain to hear, and that was in the relative peace of their room, let alone a busy street. It was the fact that he never seemed to know when to speak, sometimes apparently missing direct questions, and sometimes interrupting with no warning. It was the fact that he clearly wasn’t used to having an actual physical mouth, and kept forgetting to enunciate properly.
And, though this wasn’t a ‘talking thing’ per se, he was always curled up somehow, apparently finding it easier to experience the world as a ball, so he was always speaking into his forearm, or his knees, and it really didn’t help with the ‘too quiet’ thing.
So she couldn’t really mark it down as ‘needs to learn to stop speaking in metaphors’, or ‘needs to pay more attention to conversational etiquette’. And she couldn’t, as much as she might want to, mark it down as ‘The Talking Problem’. That felt just a little too mean. So, ‘The Talking Thing’ it remained.
The next item, she felt, was much more reasonable as an item on the ‘unforeseen’ list.
She had it marked down simply as:
• Walking?????
That one came very close after the last, as, the instant she’d decided they needed some form of groceries (once the ones she’d bought while he was asleep had run out), he’d insisted on coming with her. Apparently, something about sitting alone for an unpredictable amount of time with nothing to do, in an oddly-lit half-crumbled apartment, didn’t sound appealing to him.
She had, at that realisation, guiltily added another item to her mental list that didn’t get written down for a while, since, depending on the day, she couldn’t decide whether to mark it down as ‘clingy’, ‘lonely’, ‘annoying’, or ‘needs me’. Eventually, a brainwave hit and she’d managed to settle on:
• Doesn’t like being alone too long
The walking thing, though, was an odd one. Even once he’d built up the strength to be able to walk without leaning on her, even once he stopped needing to sit down every few minutes (whether because of physical exhaustion, or the sheer overload of being outdoors), he still never seemed to find his balance.
Sometimes it was like he’d been on a boat for a long time, and had got used to compensating for the swaying waves. That wasn’t too bad. Boats are common, they might need one again someday. It certainly wasn’t one of the things that made him stand out in a crowd.
But sometimes it was like he didn’t expect to be able to walk into things. Which, she supposed in retrospect, he probably wasn’t used to things being in his way, and he definitely wasn’t used to being physical enough that it was possible to win or lose such an encounter. Consequently, it didn’t take long before he was covered in odd-placed bruises, and even after the main period of ‘growing pains’ (as she generously called them), he still could be relied upon to always have at least one.
--
It was around this point on the list that he’d actually found it, which she really should have seen coming, given how lax she’d been about keeping it to herself. She just honestly hadn’t really considered the possibility that he’d care enough to look, especially since she’d never added to it while he was awake (and he slept deeply, she knew that for a fact). And, to the unassuming eye, it was just an old letter.
But then, maybe she should have known his eye was not unassuming, even when he wasn’t bored out of his newly-acquired skull and clinging to her like a very large, skinny duckling.
It was blink-and-you-miss-it, really. She’s not sure she would’ve even realised he’d seen it, if it weren’t for two facts. First, the next time she saw it, it was definitely not where she’d left it. And second, it seemed to have a new item on it, written in what would have been an impressive approximation of her own handwriting if it wasn’t for the fact that whoever had written it had clearly not held a pen in a long time.
The new item simply said:
• Tired.
It was almost endearing how meticulous he’d been to add the full stop, with something like the opposite of a flourish. With deliberateness that seemed to imply he was correcting her grammar.
She’d raised her eyebrows, given him a pointed look across the room where he sat, and wordlessly added a new item of her own:
• Can’t communicate directly, except by passive-aggressively adding to other people’s lists
She did not add a full stop.
Then she’d pointedly left it exactly where she’d found it, glancing back at him as if to dare him to add to it where she could see. Which she was. A little.
He didn’t, in the end, and true to form didn’t bring it up verbally at all. But, the next time she found it, the only addition was a long curving arrow between the ‘can’t communicate directly’ and ‘The Talking Thing’ points, and a careful question mark.
She grinned, despite herself.
--
It was, in retrospect, very obviously this point at which the list stopped being ‘Billie’s list’ and started being ‘their list’. Which, in retrospect, made a lot of sense. But Billie wasn’t really sure how she felt about it, though, if pressed, she might have used the word ‘weird’.
Because, on the one hand, it made total sense that he’d take an interest in a document (however slapdash) about him, and especially one that wasn’t openly hostile, and especially one that had an obvious benefit for him. It made total sense that he’d find it helpful; for all her glibness, it was true that he found it hard to say things directly, and this was a way he could communicate his needs.
On the other hand, that wasn’t what she’d made it for. She wasn’t really sure what she had made it for, but it certainly hadn’t been anything she’d intended to share. In fact, it had come into being so organically that she’d half convinced herself it didn’t really exist until it was several items long, and, now communal, sat openly tacked to the wall.
Like a shopping list. But weird.
The lack of (written) title made her wonder if he’d figured out the purpose of the two sections, (and, given the discrepancy in length, made her wonder if there still was a purpose to having both). But the lack of (written) title also meant he had been very liberal in his interpretation of the purpose of the thing, and had taken to adding things quite freely, once he got in the habit.
The next few items were all of the same kind, riffing off the ‘acclimatising to sunlight’ one:
• Can feel clothes. Uncomfortable.
• My neck hurts (problem?)
• People are loud. Even at night.
• Teeth?
• Not used to being able to taste things.
And so on.
Billie had taken the liberty of writing a little note next to his complaint about neck pain, adding a curt ‘- your posture is terrible’ before she’d thought better of it. In fact, one night when she was feeling particularly uncharitable, she wondered if she could get away with crossing out all items of that kind and replacing them all with a more general ‘everything is too much’, or ‘senses are weird’, but she did think better of that one.
(She had no idea what he was referring to his teeth for, and decided to hope he’d elaborate if it was important.)
The thing that really nagged at her, is that she wasn’t quite sure why he added to the list. Whether it was just a way of complaining, or if he was asking for something, or if he wanted advice. Whether it was his personal notes or directed at her. But then, she also wasn’t totally sure why she had started to write them down. It had just seemed natural at the time to make a note, even if she wasn’t really planning on doing anything about it.
She did wonder whether he had essentially appropriated the list as a weird sort of diary. In reverse of how a normal person would use it, of course, he seemed to need an excuse to be less verbose, and say things like 'my hair is growing, how annoying' rather than 'Time Leaves Strange Marks Upon The Body, Who Knows What We Might Become In Months, Years, Decades; I Can Feel It Tickling At My Neck'.
Which was fair, she supposed. It was pretty normal to keep a journal. She certainly did.
That particular suspicion was all but confirmed (at least by her reckoning) when he started adding positives to the list, like:
• Rain is nice.
Or:
• I like having real hands again.
And at that point, she really had to change her mental title to something involving ‘Consequences’ rather than ‘Complications’, and the little jab about him being ‘clueless’ now seemed increasingly unfair, especially since he’d grown bolder about what he was willing (or able) to share, so that something like:
• Leave a candle on at night.
Would be right next to:
• Relationships are hard when everyone thinks they know you, but they don’t know you’re you.
It gave her whiplash, honestly.
So maybe the list didn’t need a title. Maybe it just was whatever they needed it to be, and it knew what that meant, and that was enough.
But, either way, now that it was ‘their list’ instead of ‘Billie’s list’, it was becoming increasingly apparent that something else needed to be added, which, true to form, simply got written down as:
• The Name Thing
Because, really, what do you call someone whose name is so integral to their humanity that it saved their life, but which you physically can’t pronounce? Most of the time, of course, it was easy to avoid. It’s not like they really separated enough for her to need to get his attention much, and when she did, calling him ‘hey, kid’, or gesturing him over, seemed to suffice.
But if it was going to be ‘their list’ (of indeterminate title), then really it should be ‘Billie’s AND’, and that was the point where she got stuck. And, sure, she could just ask him to write his name on the page for the purposes of the list, but that really didn’t do anything about the pronunciation problem.
And of course, direct communication isn’t an option. So on the list it went.
And, because direct communication isn’t an option, the result of this little stunt was… another list. It appeared on the wall next to the first (which was now multiple pages long and completely devoid of structure), again with such little fanfare that she barely noticed it at first, and had to do a double take.
This one was headed, ‘NAMES’ in all capitals, in his increasingly distinctive (but still a little shaky) handwriting, and was entirely blank save for a boldly-drawn bullet point, eagerly awaiting a first suggestion.
It stayed that way for quite a while.
Her first instinct, of course, had been to find and buy or steal an actual book of baby names, and just thwap it down onto the floor underneath the list. And then she had realised that, in the spirit of real passive aggression, she really shouldn’t be ‘thwapping’ anything, and should leave it there quietly and wait to see how long it took for him to notice it.
But she wasn’t really sure where she’d get one of those, and if she was being honest with herself, stealing someone else’s list didn’t really feel in the spirit of the little game they were apparently now playing.
So, the other obvious option was to add something to the list that was obviously silly, or wrong, and would never be something he’d choose. But that also felt just a little too mean. And she couldn’t really suggest something that felt right either.
So, she left it blank.
He probably knew more names than her anyway.