Thanks!

It’s a very evocative opening, and I think the mood you’re setting works fine until the end of the first paragraph. Afterwards, as the others pointed out, you suffer from an overwhelming number of metaphors.

They’re distracting for two reasons: first because they make the language too flowery, and second (and more serious to me as a reader) because I can’t determine whether you mean it or not.

For instance: “she caught the moon in her bucket”. I assumed on first reading that this meant that she tilted her bucket so that the moon was reflected in it, but there is always a possibility that she actually caught the moon. I don’t know enough about the rules of your world to be able to tell when it’s a metaphor, and when it’s literal.

The metaphor of the apple seed is distracting because it seems to zoom away from Humility’s point of view, and also because it’s repeated twice. I must confess that it took me a while to understand why her shaved head was an apple-seed (in fact, I’m not sure I have understood), and also a while to see that the “it rose out of the polished apple-seed” referred to her seeing
the dragon in the water, rather than in the real world.

Also, there’s a bit of a timeframe problem, since the second sentence is in the past tense, which implies that its action is set directly after the first one. Patently impossible. I think it would work better if you set that second sentence in past perfect, and then ease back into past when you can, to make it clear at which point in time we are.

As a rather picky, scholarly sidenote (and, knowing nothing of the world this is set in, I am probably being unfair to you) you might want to know that Chinese dragons seldom have wings (unless they’re very old and wise and of a particular category), and that very few of them would be described as “hungry”. They cause floods and storms, but as far as I’m aware they don’t eat people (and Humility would know this). I’m only mentioning this because the setting screams Chinese, or at any rate East Asia, and I was rather disappointed to find a dragon that seemed straight out of European legends.

I rather like the drool, though. It’s a concrete detail that most writers wouldn’t have thought of, and it may be surfing close to the ridiculous, but it’s more, I think, because of the choice of word rather than the idea, which is a good one.

In spite of all those comments, however, it worked for me. I would have turned the page.

Prose seems forced — like you’re pulling for too many metaphors (I agree with Vivian on this). It’s as if the story (i.e., what’s really happening) is getting lost in an attempt to make the prose more literary. (I’m all for literary prose — not enough of it in SFF.) Examples: The sky is infinite/endless twice; the sky is a sea and the dragon’s eyes are gulfs, etc. “Polished apple-seed head” (twice used) doesn’t help me. “Ivory knives” when you mean teeth, etc.

I think what is happening is that the moon reflection is magically caught in the water of Humility’s bucket, that the dragon rises from the bucket and swallows the moon. Maybe the dragon arises out of Humility’s head. Not sure.

To elaborate, it seems like capturing the moon in the water is what brings forth the dragon but I really have to guess at that because you haven’t made it clear that that’s what happened. You say that the moon in the bucket is a “miracle” but you kind of just toss that single word in the sentence. It looks like it’s a really important word but it’s easy for it to get lost (readers aren’t always thoughtful and careful) amid all the other descriptions. As Vivian suggested, it probably needs more prominence, if not out-and-out explanation.

In paragraph 3, I think you mean to convey that the dragon rising from the water obscured or obliterated the reflection of Humility’s head in the water. That’s there but it’s hard to read/understand because you rapidly go from a nice understandable description (sentence 1, par 3) to apple-seed metaphor (where did apples and seeds come from and why is that metaphor apt?), and you’re expecting us to keep up with that.

It’s not clear what the relationship is between Humility’s head’s reflection and the risen dragon. If the dragon isn’t coming magically out of Humility or from her reflection, etc., it might be best to just lose that imagery. If she/her reflection are part of the magic, then it needs to be clearer. Shedding some of the imagery or more clearly linking the images with the actual things might help.

Then you go on with how huge the dragon is — it’s a big leap — an imaginary chasm that you don’t draw us over. Problem with imaginary chasms is that many of us just crash to the bottom if the author doesn’t manage to help us make the leap. Did the dragon grow slowly out of a wisp of water from the bucket? How did it go from being a small reflection in water to a towering, slobbing monster? Did Humility see this happen? If so, what did it look like? I get no real sense of time as the dragon is becoming real — which is another thing that seems unbalanced.

So, it’s as if you’ve tossed in the important stuff but focussed too much on the unimportant stuff. For me, descriptions of the sky and the dragon are unncessary because I pretty much think I know what those things look like. Meanwhile, you have magic (”a miracle”) and a dragon coming out of a bucket of water and I am left with almost nothing about those two important things.

There is so much description of the dragon (i.e., lots of focus on what it looks like) and you only give us “rose” to describe what’s happening (i.e., the action). You’ve traded passive description (of something that is easy for readers to imagine) and lost an opportunity to write some interesting action (that is a lot harder for us to imagine). If you spent your word-chips on describing what is more difficult for us to conceptualize, I think you get more points than if you give us a description of something that doesn’t need many words to describe.

I’m not suggesting that you add more (or reduce the quantity of) descriptors, but maybe focus more on the action/what’s happening and less on the prose. Let the action lead the prose. How much descriptive prose you put in depends a lot on whether this is a short story opening or a novel opening. I think we need to judge the two differently. If this is a short, then there’s way too much we don’t need to swallow. If this is a novel opening, then I expect a more satisfying literary meal in my first 13 lines.

Just for the sake of “diff’ folk/diff’ strokes” — I kind of like “infinite depths of nothing” — spacetime is pretty much an infinite depth of nothing. I also liked “smiling silver face” because I don’t think there’s enough alliteration in SFF. (No offense, Vivian!)

But hey, the moon in the water and the dragon from the bucket — very magical and an interesting idea. Certainly worth working on.

Re: Humility’s name–I would either use its local form (whatever that would be), or a longer version to mark it as distinctly other: Humility-in-the-face-of-God’s-Love or something that suggests a longer, more alien form. Otherwise she sounds like the seventeenth Pilgrim daughter, and (to me) vaguely comical.

I don’t mind the drool–breath wouldn’t have the same effect–but in the first graph you imply that the dragon is appearing, not attac
king. The hot-drool-on-the-back-of-the-neck suggests that the next thing to happen is that Humility becomes a Dragon Lunchable.

The descriptions are taking too much of my attention. I have to stop and decide whether the sky is literally a sea. “Infinite depths of nothing” is an oxymoron, and brought me up short. “A smiling silver face” is too disparate from the previous images to flow easily. Why the moon is a miracle needs explanation. (Or leave out this description until later, when there is time to explain it). “The polished apple-seed” and “Humility’s head” don’t visually match well.

In the opening paragraph, the first sentence leads me to expect the dragon to appear on stage within the same paragraph. Consider giving us an indication that the story has moved back in time a bit.

Also, there is a gross factor with the dragon’s drool, which detracts from its spookiness. And you might want to try some other images besides visual–sounds or touches. Although I think the dragon’s approach being silent works well.