[QCrit] LITTLE FIG, Upmarket w/Spec Elements, 99k (attempt 1)
Dear [Agent Name],
[Personalization]
She has lived ten thousand lives, buried everyone she ever loved, and wanted nothing more than to stop. This time, she is Gilgamesh's sister.
Hua carries the memories of all her past lives: the loves, the losses, the accumulated grief of an existence she cannot end. Reborn as a frail girl in a neolithic Mesopotamian tribe, she keeps her head down and her multitudes hidden. She desires only to be left alone.
But when Hua is overheard singing in a forgotten language, the tribe accuses her of being a demon, and she is sent up a holy mountain to be judged by the spirits — a mountain to which none dare venture, and fewer still return. There, Hua experiences something that, in all her lives, is new: a vision. An unfathomable civilization, filled with people of every kind, centered around a great tower. She comes to believe it is a message from the gods, and the means, at last, to end the cycle. But the trees are not so sure.
Hua brings the tribe her vision: a great tower, shared knowledge, a better life. Some follow her — Gilgamesh foremost, who sees in this the key to his own immortality — though many resist. When Hua makes secret contact with neighboring tribes, the chief has her flogged and bans her from leaving the village. She discreetly encourages her followers to do so instead. When one of them is killed for it, she uses that death to stir the tribe to revenge, if only to save herself. And it is in revenge, and the series of betrayals that follow, that Gilgamesh finally finds himself. Hua allows it, all of it, because it serves her as well.
He will take everything she teaches him, everything she builds, everything she sacrifices, and when it is over, he will stand before the people and call her a demon. She will let him. She has, at last, what ten thousand lives denied her: the conviction that she has set something in motion that will outlast even her. The myth of Gilgamesh is his. The civilizations that follow are hers. The trees are unconvinced.
LITTLE FIG is a work of upmarket fiction with speculative elements, complete at 99,000 words. Like Madeline Miller’s Circe, it recovers the woman history needed to villainize. Like Daniel Mason’s North Woods, it asks what the project of building civilization looks like from a perspective old enough to watch it rise and grieve what it cost.
[bio]
I have enclosed [materials] per your submission guidelines. Thank you for your time and consideration.
[Name]
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Would love any feedback you have!
(And additionally, a question: is the middle section too dense? Would it be better served by just cutting everything from "When Hua makes secret contact..." to the end of the para?)