AND THEN THERE'S THIS MOTHERFUCKER!
This is something that sort of happened and I have no idea whether it worked or not. I'd love some feedback--but does Krish still feel alien, detached? This takes place before she gets her new pet.
Charlie, it was wonderful getting to see Krish again. She's your most abstract character, I think. Which is both good and bad. I'll get to some of the trouble with the abstract in a minute, but it's good because it affords her a sort of power of the reader's mind. That she's not a simple construction, and that the reader must to a little work to understand her, makes her powerful. I've got some general feedback for you, but I'll answer the question you asked above first.
Does Krish still feel alien? Yes, by all means, yes. Your descriptions of her reinforce her alien nature. There is some repetition in the description which I've marked in my line notes, but other than that, the description gives me a sense of what she is and what she's not without me ever really visualizing her entirely. Which is good. I can't possibly comprehend this thing with my feeble little human mind, so I must view her only in pieces. That works really well.
Now, onto some more general feedback. I think narratively, the story is all there. I've outlined what I gathered from the story below. So, if I'm wrong, then the narrative probably needs some work (but I don't think I'm wrong):
1) Krish wants a special mask
2) Reinhart wants the same mask
3) Krish cannot simply take the mask because it must be handed to her by a human
4) The mask is held in a temple in New Wolfward
5) Krish has built an army of dreamers
6) Reinhart captures one of those dreamers to help him get the mask
7) Krish uses the mask to patch her leaky house and complete it
So, now that we now what the story is about, let's talk about the structure and the way the story is presented. Structurally, I think you'll want to insert us immediately into the action, the meat, of the story. That means starting it when Krish is visited by the dreamer. That does not mean you have to cut out any of the descriptions. But look at it this way: You have four pages of nothing but description before we are finally introduced to the dreamer. You can move much of that description into little breaks between Krish's interaction with the dreamer.
This serves two purposes: 1) It gets us into the story quicker, and 2) It amps up the tension if you have Krish inserting images and thoughts into the dreamer's mind (which clearly has an adverse effect on the dreamer) then you pull us away for a moment as you tell us a bit about the surroundings, the dimensions Krish currently occupies, etc.
This now leads into how abstract this story is. I think you can keep most of the abstract feeling, but you should probably make some things a little more straightforward. I was completely lost when Krish first meets the human and "Krish explained her offer." Here's the passage:
Krish kept her message simple—a basic diagram of a Ragnarok-engine (all thirteen chambers —separated by time— pumping away), a pair of suns blazing away in a lop-sided solar system —a door sealed with frost and photon-locks. A Blackwood and epidermal mask, glowing with dopamine receptors and sigils across its lips and eyelid that wormed about when they thought no-one was looking, electrodes patched onto it. The woman, newly blessed with glistening boons, standing ecstatic over a broken altar, heavy with terminal, blissful rewards as Krish vanished into the ether.
There is imagery here of what Krish will eventually want this woman to do (help her get the mask), but what's the offer? I think you're getting at it with the last sentence, but I didn't understand. So, again, I don't think you're hurting the story if here and there you insert some plain language like:
Krish forced the images into the woman's mind. The woman would deliver the mask, and for that sacrifice—and it would be a heavy sacrifice if they were to be successful—the woman would be rewarded with...
Of course, you can word that in your style, but I hope you get what I mean. The reason I say this is it took me until page 10 to understand what was happening. Once I did, I went back and the rest made sense, but I think you want to make it clear much earlier...by page one or two if possible.
There's also an important moment that doesn't come until the last page, but is so key to the story, I think you should consider moving it way up in the story, and it's this:
The woman lunged for the mask—Krish could not touch it unless a human handed it to her.
It explains why Krish would need an army of hypnotized humans. Which is super cool, btw. It's like Tybalt's army of undead, but with live humans. So, if I'm understanding it properly, Krish was simply hedging her bets, right? She built an army for both attack and because she needed just one to survive long enough to get to the mask and hand it over. If so, that's another thing that I don't think needs to be abstract. Human or alien, some concepts are straight forward and are better left straight forward.
All in all, I think this was a fanstastic detour from what you had been writing. Whether it works into a grander narrative, I don't know. But I do know that this draft is well on its way to becoming something worthy of submission. Good stuff, my friend!
Attachments:Krish and Dreamers.pdf (263.65 KB)
