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The only thing that Will can think about all of this is BRAIN-FREEZE. One second, he's taking a special middle-of-the-school-year vacation with his mom in New York while she's on tour, the next pigeons are stabbing him and this random hearing guy (with horns?) is taking him to someplace in the middle of nowhere.
During the school year, Will usually lives at his school during the week and with his Aunt on the weekends or breaks when his mom's out of town. And he loves it like that. All of his teachers and friends are Deaf too, he never has to vocalize if he doesn't want to outside of the speech therapy he chose to sign up for, and classmates don't usually give him too much trouble about his CIs.
His mom was pretty misguided when he was a baby by “professionals” who thought ASL was evil, so he doesn't fault her for listening to them. They were certainly disappointed when Will learned ASL first and his mom ran with it. Now, she's fluent in sign and it's their main language at home. Unfortunately, his Aunt and cousins refuse to learn ASL— citing that they don't need to learn because his implants fixed his deafness. As much as it's annoying, Will is still happy that his family that matters the most learned his language.
All of that to say, Will has no reason to have his CIs on when he's with his mom. He's wearing them because it's easier to “look Deaf” when they're out, but he has them on such a low setting they only really help with loud noises. It's too overwhelming to hear all the time, especially in a big city.
Of course, this new hearing guy doesn't know any ASL. And he's in too much of a rush to even let Will say he's Deaf. His mom is trying to interpret for him, but there's too many words she has to fingerspell and it's making it hard for Will to follow. His dyslexia is never too much of a problem, but when he's having to rapidly switch between English and ASL every other word it gets hard to keep up. Plus, the man hasn't faced Will to speak for more than a couple syllables at a time. Not that Will's great at lipreading, but he can survive usually.
Eventually, they make it to a strawberry farm. All of this for some berries? Seriously? They walk up a hill, approaching a large pine tree when his mom abruptly stops.
“I can't come with you, Sunshine. I love you so, so much. And before you know it, we'll be together again. Be good Will, I'll come by tomorrow with your things at the hotel and have your favorite things from home sent here. Everything will make sense soon, and don't be afraid to be yourself,” his mom signs, then hugging him tightly and kissing him on the head.
“Where are we? Why can't you come?” Will asks.
“Camp, to keep you safe. I can't come because you're special. This place is for kids like you,” she replies, a sad expression on her face.
Will tilts his head in confusion, “Deaf kids? Then why don't I go back to school. What about my school?”
She shakes her head, “No sweetie, not Deaf. Kids with parents like yours. I'll talk to your school to have classwork sent to you here, like your friends whose parents are farmers. You need to go now, Will. I love you always, no matter what.”
At that, his mom gives him one last hug and walks back down the hill. The man leads Will past the tree, and out of nowhere buildings and people appear. Will finally has a moment to adjust his implants and realizes two things: the man doesn't have human legs and that he's been talking to him. Wow, he still hasn't caught onto me being Deaf? With the chaos of everything, Will feels too overwhelmed to be able to focus on hearing, missing the majority of what the man is saying since he can't see his lips still.
“Big —se. —migo-s. —r dad. Ch—on,” The man rambles on as they approach a large, Victorian-style home.
On the covered porch, a plump man with a scruffy beard and a guy in a wheelchair are playing cards. They all speak to each other and Will zones out— like he always does when hearing people talk around him like he's not there. He's snapped back into the moment when he notices the three men staring at him like he's supposed to say something.
Will puts on his best paying attention to hearing people's conversations face, “Sorry, what did you say?”
The plump man rolls his eyes, “Maron and Chiron, are you both fucking idiots? The kid's Deaf. He probably didn't hear anything you said. Can't believe I haven’t had the sense to fire both of you. Can't even notice the bright yellow hearing aids.”
The man's, apparently named Maron, eyes went wide.
“They’re cochlear implants. Not hearing aids,” Will speaks up.
The man waves his hand and faces Will, “Mortal technology, always changing words. Implants. What did you catch?”
Will hesitates, “Nothing really. Camp for kids with parents like mine? I don't know what that means. That I'm staying here and my mom's sending my stuff?”
The two men sigh and put down their cards, the wheelchair user standing to reveal a horse body below his waist, “My name is Chiron, I'm the activities director. You are at Camp Half-Blood, for demigods like you. Your father is a Greek God and the myths are real. Follow me, there's an orientation video.”
Chiron leads Will to a small room with a couch and an old TV and turns on an obviously outdated video. There's a blonde man on the sepia screen. The audio is muffled like the old Christmas movies he sometimes watches with his mom, but this looks like a home video that wouldn't have captions. Will tries to make sense of it, but between the mediocre audio and the constantly changing perspectives he gives up after 5 minutes.
Will taps Chiron, “I can't hear it.”
“Oh dear. I suppose the audio is a bit unclear, no captions either. So much for that, I will give you the tour then,” Chiron responds.
As they walk back through the maze of hallways, they're stopped by the same extremely blunt man from earlier, “Chiron, you're crap at this. If I had any sense, I'd fire you. I'll show the kid around.”
“YOU-NAME-WHAT?” The man signs to Will, much to his surprise.
Will introduces himself and his name sign, which is like the sign for sun but with a W handshape and asks the man, “YOY-KNOW-ASL-YOU?”
The man nods and motions for Will to follow him to an office as he continues to sign, “My name’s Mr. D. You may know me by a different name, Dionysus. And of course I know sign language. Now, we need to work things out. Only one other person here fluently signs, what are we gonna do about that?”
“I guess I can just speak and lipread. It won't be that bad…” Will not-so-confidently replies.
Mr. D scoffs, “Seriously? You can't lie to a god. Try that again.”
Will shrugs, “ASL’s my first language. I think in ASL before I think in English. I’ll always choose it first, but I can't make people learn it.”
“That may be true, but I can make people learn it,” the god smirks, “Or at least have classes. You're not the first Deaf demigod and you won't be the last. Now tell me about those cochlear implants of yours.”
“I got them a little after I turned one. I don't always like using them, though. They make everything too loud and I still have to try really hard to understand people. And most people think they fix everything so they forget to face me and I miss basically everything then. They help me know what's going on around me, though,” Will explains.
The immortal nods and jots down some notes, “We can talk to the Hephaestus cabin about refining them and people will learn to face you when they talk.”
“Hephaestus?” Will slowly tries to repeat the fingerspelling.
“God of the forges, his kids are always good at making mortal technology better. When you need an interpreter, let me know. You'll be able to get out of some of the rules with them, like at meals or with some activities that separate by cabin,” Mr. D explains as he writes down more notes in a file.
At that, Mr. D stands up, prompting Will to follow. He explains that they're going to the infirmary to make sure everybody's on the same page about what he needs and to get started on making his CIs more functional. The house they're in truly does seem endless, because suddenly they're in a large space that could easily be mistaken for a hospital. At the front desk is a teenager with straight blonde hair wearing an orange T-shirt and an armband with a red cross on it.
The teen suddenly sits up, “Mr. D! What brings you in? Not sure if I can do anything too helpful for you, but Luke is due for another supermarket trip soon if—”
“Hush Levi, I'm fine,” Mr. D cuts him off, then slows down his speech as he starts to simcom, “This is Will Solace, unclaimed but I have my suspicions, just came today. He's Deaf, here's some notes about it. Mortal technology I'm not familiar with, but nonetheless.”
The boy turns to Will and smiles, he choppily signs to Will “Hi, my name's L-E-E F-L-E-T-C-G-E-R. My mom's S-P-P-O-L-L-O. I’m Head Hospital. Nice to meet you.”
Will giggles a little bit at the mistakes, but signs back slowly to introduce himself before speaking aloud, “I can talk for you, and you can too. You just need to face me when you talk and I might miss things. Your signing is good!”
Mr. D shakes his head annoyedly, “He is the Head Medic. He is not a hospital, he's a demigod. It's Lee Fletcher, his father is Apollo, the god of sun, healing, archery, music, and a million other things. Don’t tell him he’s good at signing, he doesn’t need the ego boost. Fletcher, you need to work on the ASL, I'll interpret for now.”
Lee groans, “I know, I will. Anyways Will, I read awhile back about how CIs work and how they're kinda mediocre. Which is what these notes say for you too. If you want, I can get my friend to try to make you a new processor and adjust the settings to fix the annoying parts of it.”
Will agrees, not wanting to be completely lost in every conversation he has with all the hearing kids here for the rest of forever, “Can they still be yellow? It's my favorite color.”
“Of course, Will,” Lee laughs, turning his head to shout down the corridor, “Heyo Beck! Get in here! I got a project!”
A few moments later another teen, a tall Black teen with a fade wearing a heavy looking apron, walks through the doorway, “I just finished Hayden’s new crutches, what's up?”
“Meet Will Solace, unclaimed and just got here. He's Deaf and uses cochlear implants. You think you can make a processor that's better at differentiating sounds and makes understanding speech less work?” Lee asks.
The boy turns to Will and starts signing surprisingly fluently, “My name's Charles Beckendorf, most people call me Beckendorf or Beck.” He shows his sign name, which uses a C handshape tapping on his chest, “I'm a Hard of Hearing, a hearing aids user, and my whole family's Deaf. I'm fourth generation. My family's from Atlanta and my mom is a professor at Georgia Tech named Pauline with my stepdad Brian Sterling. I have a mortal Deaf half brother who graduated from Gallaudet a few years back and now works at NTID named Aaron. It's nice to meet you. Here, I'm a son of Hephaestus, Cabin 9 Head Counselor, and the Access Liaison in the infirmary. Can you tell me more about what's annoying about your CIs?”
Will is beaming by the time Beckendorf finishes talking, eager that somebody at camp who isn't thousands of years old knows his language. He eagerly explains in detail all the ways his implants work, or don't work, not worried about oversharing anymore. He hands his processors to Beckendorf, who is fidgeting with them in his hands as he keeps eye contact with Will.
“Alright, I've never worked on implants before but I can feel the machinery and think I know what's causing your problems,” the son of Hephaestus then turns to the other two and starts simcomming “Cochlear implants work by digitizing sound and bypassing damaged cells, sending an artificial sound signal to the brain. Problem is, they simplify sounds a lot, which is why they're hard to use. I've got some stuff in my workshop to help diversify that sound more, and I should be able to change the electrodes in Will's head using my powers so they can take the changes. Also, I should be able to give Will better control over the settings depending on the environment.”
“What will it sound like?” Will asks.
“It should be more… intuitive. Like it is for hearing people. Won't be perfect, obviously, but it'll be less work for you to keep up in everyday conversations, easier to filter different levels of sound, better pitch accuracy, stuff like that. Your hearing right now is super visual, you rely on sight to know what's going on. I'm hoping this will take your comprehension up to like 80-90% without needing to lipread, versus your current like 50%. Well that’s my guesstimate if your hearing’s anything like mine is,” Beckendorf explains.
Will nervously shifts, “What if it's too much?”
“Then take them off or change the settings. Hearing is exhausting, I take breaks all the time. Hearing people just gotta figure it out. I'll also start up my ASL class again, hopefully having two Deaf campers will make more people want to learn this time around,” Beckendorf replies, “Mr. D, I can take over the tour from here. Come on Will, there's more to camp than just the Big House.”
Will happily follows the older boy. As they walk through camp, Beckendorf slowly spells out each Greek word and shows Will the name sign he made up for each. He offhandedly mentions that he never really told anybody about the sign names but likes finally having somebody to share it with, citing that it takes two to make a language. He introduces Will to the rest of Cabin 9, mentioning that besides a couple other campers they're the best at signing, albeit still at an elementary level.
The last stop on the tour is a dinky looking brown cabin. Beckendorf knocks on the door before entering. A blonde teen waves and greets him in ASL before switching to English, “New camper?”
“Yep, meet Will Solace, unclaimed but Mr. D has suspicions. He’s Deaf too, make sure you face him when you talk. He might need more repeating than what you’re used to with me,” Beckendorf explains, “This is Luke Castellan. He’s the Head Counselor of the Hermes Cabin during the school year, where you’ll be staying until you’re claimed. Him and the Stoll brothers are the only hearing campers who you can have an actual conversation with in ASL.”
“What did you mean earlier when you said ‘This time around’ about your class?” Will asks, the two teens grimacing slightly.
“I tried to start an ASL class a couple years ago when I first got here. Did the research on best ways to teach hearing people and everything. Only a few people in my cabin, Lee, Luke, and Stolls showed up. Everybody else drilled it into me that it was useless and not a real language. It's easy for people to forget that ASL’s my first language and I’m culturally Deaf because I can pass for hearing most of the time. But yeah, I gave up after a few months, too tiring,” Beckendorf explains, “But you’re a little cutie, that oughta help the cause. Unfortunately, I’ve got my father’s looks.”
“Bullshit, Beck. You got a cute face too. If you run the class again, I’ll make sure people are better about it,” Luke replies, “Plus, ever since Lee made your position at the infirmary it’s been getting better.”
“Yeah, maybe it’ll be better this time. Nonetheless, welcome to your new home Will! You can find me in the infirmary, the forges, or with Cabin 9 most of the time if you need anything. I’m gonna go back to work on your processors. Luke, don’t get him into too much trouble,” Beckendorf says with a grin, heading out the door.
Luke smiles and starts signing. He has an obvious hearing accent, but Will can still easily understand him, “You lucked out coming here in the middle of the school year, we got some open cots. If you’re not claimed by summer, you’ll get moved to the floor. I’ll steal you some bedding and toiletries from the store later today. We’re all family here, so let me know if you need anything or anybody’s giving you a hard time and I’ll deal with it. Our cabin’s at the arena right now, but no offense, you’re a little young for that. How about I take you to the art center?”
Will agrees and the two head towards the art center. A teenage girl with long wavy brown hair greets them, who Will soon learns is named Silena. She seems to get a bit awkward when she first realizes that Will’s Deaf, but quickly adjusts after a stern look from Luke.
“Wanna learn how to make bracelets?” Silena asks Will.
“It’s a rite of passage, I’ll help too,” Luke encourages.
“Okay, but I can’t look at the thing and understand you at the same time,” Will hesitantly explains.
“I know, I’m best friends with Beck. I’ll interpret the best I can and tell me if you miss anything,” Luke explains, “Silena, you’ve really gotta learn ASL if you wanna get closer to him.”
Silena groans, “I know, it’s just my cabin is so much work that I’m always wrangling them and never have the time to learn.”
“Make your cabin take the class too. He’s running it again soon, I’m gonna make mine do it. Beck and Will should have more than me, the Stolls, and each other to talk to,” Luke continues.
Silena tries to butt in, “But they can—”
“No. Lipreading sucks and ASL is their first language,” Luke interrupts, “I know I get the Hermes god of language advantage, but that doesn’t mean you can’t learn. Us counselors gotta unionize to get the rest of camp and Chiron on board. Can’t believe that useless horse didn’t even try last time.”
“Alright, alright, calm down.” Silena says, suddenly making Will feel calmer too, “I’ll talk to my cabin. Now bracelets! Luke and Will, pick two colors each.”
Will picks out yellow and orange skeins, while Luke picks out forest green and bronze. Silena contributes a rosy pink, cutting and tying the threads so there’s three matching knotted strands. As she walks Will through the steps, Luke interprets and shows Will on his own bracelet. After a couple of hours, the three have finished their bracelets. Silena has made a bracelet with intricate designs, Luke’s is a chevron pattern, and Will’s is basic stripes. Well, except for some accidental spots from mistakes.
“Now we’ll always be friends,” Luke says with a warm smile as he ties his bracelet around Will’s wrist. Silena then ties hers right next to Luke’s and smiles too.
Will briefly feels bad since he only has one bracelet to give. In a stroke of genius, he grabs the colors they had picked out and quickly braids them together before handing them to Luke and Silena, “Friends,” Will simcoms.
Soon enough, Beckendorf starts the ASL class and invites Will to help teach. Since he hasn’t gotten any word from his mom about school yet, he’s happy to fill some of his time with something to do. Like Luke promised, all of the head counselors and many of their cabin members are in attendance. Beckendorf started the class with a lecture about Deaf culture and history, which they seemed receptive to. It’s weird for Will to have to slow down his signing so much, but he’s happy that they seem open to learning. Beckendorf seems happy too.
A couple weeks pass when Will's called into Mr. D’s office for a phone call with his mom. A new video relay device sits on the god’s desk and he sees his mom appear on the screen. Even though it hasn’t been too long, he misses his mom so much. It’s different being at school and his aunt’s from being here. She updates him on her tour and their family. Will tells her all about camp, the friends he’s made, and the class he’s helping with.
“Speaking of classes, your school is almost done getting all the work for this term to send to you. It should get to you by the end of the week. They do fax, so you just have to send them your work each month. Mr. D tells me he can help you with the fax machine to do that. You might have to occasionally send them a video for a presentation, but otherwise you’re all set!” Naomi eagerly explains.
Will grins. It’s not that he hates what the centaur teaches the rest of the year-round campers, it’s just that Chiron is absolutely clueless about how to teach and grade him. The director still can't seem to grasp that Will really struggles to hear still even with his CIs. And as Luke regularly points out, the centaur still hasn't made any effort to stop by Beck's class. Unfortunately, the call has to end quickly after on account of his mom having to go to her sound check.
As he’s leaving the office, Beckendorf waves him down to come into his workshop. “I finished working on your processor, sorry it took so long. I gotta work on what’s in your head now, the coil.”
“...Are you qualified to do surgery?” Will asks.
“Not at all! But I’m not doing surgery, so it’s okay. Hephaestus kid, I can manipulate machines and metalware without touching them. I’ve been able to help with pins for broken bones and stuff like that before, so this should be easy to change the inner mechanism,” Beckendorf laughs, reassuring Will, “May I? I gotta touch your head for it.”
Beckendorf gently touches the boy's head, moving his hand over his scalp until he stops near where the receiver lies under his skin. He closes his eyes and meticulously moves his fingers. He then moves his hand closer to Will’s ear and continues the process going back and forth between the two sites. Much to Will’s surprise, it doesn’t hurt at all. Rather, it feels slightly warm, like the sun is shining on him gently. Like a fireplace on a cold day.
After several minutes, Beckendorf opens his eyes and smiles as he hands Will a shiny, yellow gold metal processor, “It should be set now, try on the processor before I do the other side.”
Will puts on the new processor and Beckendorf plays some music as he orally speaks about his day. For the first time, Will doesn’t feel as overwhelmed with hearing. The music is quieter and he can clearly hear Beckendorf, even when he closes his eyes. It’s weird to hear the sound of papers shuffling, or that Beckendorf’s leg bouncing is more than just vibrations but actually makes sound against the ground. For the first time, Will isn’t fighting as hard to sift out the sounds.
“Is this what hearing people think regular CIs do?!” Will excitedly exclaims.
Beckendorf laughs, “I’ll take that as it works. And yeah, that’s exactly what I thought when I adjusted my aids. Hearing people are really just out here hearing things at the volume and pitches they’re actually at. Like I said before, they won’t be perfect. So places with super loud background noise will still be hard for conversations and stuff like that. And don’t expect to be an opera singer or anything.”
“Don’t worry, I’ll leave the singing to my mom,” Will jokes.
Beckendorf smiles and places his hands on both sides of Will’s head, going quicker this time as he’s gained familiarity with what needs to be done, “Mirroring is easier than working from scratch, if you need adjustments let me know. We should check them every few months to be safe. Also, these ones are waterproof, can last 5 days if you really need them to, and I made some portable charging cases for you too. I’ll make a few extra processors too, for if you need them later down the line. Interchangeable sizes, of course.”
Will’s mouth is agape, “I think you’re magical and just remade the audiology.”
Beckendorf smiles, “Now, we’ve got a class to teach, let’s get going.”