The following is a piece of fiction I have started, possibly to turn into a comic and bankroll a la crowdsourcing. Unfortunately, I suffer from paralyzing low self-esteem. I'm not fishing for compliments, but looking for honest reactions and constructive criticism. Please read and respond.
When Donora had stepped out of her flat, the sky had been the color of slate, but now the clouds were drifting listlessly to the east to menace Wales. Pale sunlight found her face now, and she felt like a goddess again, warmth on her brow as she surveyed her domain from the misty top of Hōrai. Now, though, she was a 14-year old girl in a jumper with a stick in her hand, standing over a boy nestled among the black bags full of rubbish as if he were sleeping in a green meadow.
His head was a mop of greasy black hair, sculpted by neglect into a porcupine unceremoniously mounting a bird’s nest. Had Donora been a betting woman, she’d have not bet against the possibility of tribes of lice hacking their way through the dark tangle. The face beneath the impossible hairline, though, was a surprise. There was a hint of whimsy playing at the corners of the boy’s full lips, and his aquiline nose was unmarred by a single spot. His eyes were swollen and dark with exhaustion. Donora could relate. Still, places to go, things to be done.
“Hey,” she said, poking him gingerly in the ribs with her stick.
The boy in the rubbish did not stir.
“Hey.” This time the point of the stick found his right shoulder. Donora thought that perhaps his forehead wrinkled and relaxed, but she wasn’t sure. She was watching his eyes, wondering what color his irises would be; she hoped for complete heterochromia. Surely as fascinating a thing as a pretty young man in her rubbish had to have bi-colored eyes, a vestigial tail, a birthmark shaped like Elvis, something. Donora fancied eyes, though. She had high hopes for the eyes.
“Oi!” she said, putting on her best scowl and kicking the soles of his threadbare canvas tennis shoes.
The boy blinked a couple of times against the sun. Donora, short in her current body, was a poor substitute for a shade tree. His eyes fixed on hers and she beamed. His right eye was as brown as polished mahogany, while the left was a green marble. Score.
“I’m sorry,” he said, pushing himself upright. His eyes left hers and fixed on the study branch in Donora’s hand. “I’ve a satchel here. Please give me a moment, and I’ll be on my way.”
“Are you hurt?” Donora asked, offering him her hand. She didn’t see blood or anything, but he had been unconscious among the garbage.
He got to his feet without meeting her eyes, and found the strap for a weather-beaten satchel. It was only after he was satisfied its contents were all still there that he deigned to look at her again.
“I’m fine, thanks.”
“Would you like something to eat?” Donora asked. It occurred to her that his body was older than hers, and if he was going to take her seriously, she’d have to make a grand gesture. Blonde-haired, blue-eyed, dimples: she couldn’t have looked more adorably wholesome if she’d been holding a puppy. Even if she could manage it in this porcelain urchin body, Donora knew seduction was the wrong path to take with this lad. The hurt is still so close to the surface, I can almost touch it. Food seemed appropriate.
The boy stopped in the midst of shouldering his satchel and really looked at her for the first time. Donora’s cheeks flushed a bit as his eyes met hers. And then he smiled. Oh, what a brilliant smile! It was straight and white as in a toothpaste commercial. If he didn’t smell like an onion hidden inside of a dirty sock, she might consider the possibilities offered by that smile, but no, she couldn’t ignore the yucky.
“No. Thank you, but no,” he said, still brandishing that disarming smile like a cudgel.
Donora immediately liked him. He was cute and polite, and not at all put off by her apparent Americanness.
“Well, then I must insist you accompany me while I eat, Brian Manchester Bolland.”
She liked that trick, the one of knowing the names of people and things. However, she did not like that his smile disappeared and that he now regarded her suspiciously.
“How do you know my name?”
Whatever prat had said honesty was the best approach, clearly had never been accused of witchcraft in Spain, but at that moment in the rubbish, Donora couldn’t agree more.
“Because I am a goddess reborn, and it is my job to know things like the names of boys who sleep in the bins outside my flat.”
Manchester—his preferred name, Donora also knew—looked around dubiously to see if he was being put on. He glanced in the direction of the apartments and then returned his brown and his green eyes to her two blue ones.
“Bollocks,” he said with no trace of humor.
Dammit, she thought. Time for hardball.
“Pseudohaje goldii is the genus-species of the Gold’s tree cobra.”
The pretty homeless boy with the brilliant smile and the gorgeous, bi-colored eyes looked upon Donora then with such hate that she thought her heart might break. It had been dirty pool, but what other choice had been left to her?
And so Manchester Bolland turned his back on Nyx, the Goddess of Night, leaving her with naught but the sound of his shoes slapping on the asphalt as he ran away and a stillborn sorry on her lips.
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