Black, Black Eyes is an anthology book which contains five short stories that fallow around the characters of Marten and Niggle. The Winged One is a sequel to it.

In the story Niggle is a being known as the weap. The weap are the last race of the ancients (dragons, pixies, fairies, ect). All the rest of the ancients died off thousands of years ago in a great war between themselves and the humans. The weap live on in secret in a place they call The Second World.

The weap themselves are wish granters that feed off of human enjoyment. As such they move from person to person granting wishes.  One of the tools used in granting wishes are ‘mannequins’, people that the weap would have granted wishes for, but in time became tired of the second world and wanted to leave.

These people were turned into lifeless pieces of plastic to make sure they would not leave. At a later time, they could be turned back into a human and be given a new mind with new memories in order to help grant the wishes of a new person. So, say you wished you met the love of your life; a weap would take a mannequin, turn them back into a human, and program them to love you. Then, when you got tired of this and wanted to go back home to see your real family, the weap would turn you into a mannequin.

 

This is how their kind lives. Niggle did the same, until she met Marten, who made her realize that this was wrong. Niggle decided to leave the Second World as a result and try to have a human like life with Marten, with her hoping that they could date and she could feed off of the happiness that would cause Marten to have.

Niggle though isn’t human. The weap are not men or women, but both (Niggle sees herself as a girl) and reproduce by asexual means. As such, Niggle often feels that a human like relationship can’t work for her and feels isolated.

Besides Marten and Niggle trying to get along in a ‘normal’ relationship, there’s also the character of Shelly Blue, who is friends with Marten and Niggle.

Other characters in the book included Veronica, Shelly Blue’s old girlfriend (Shelly is bisexual)

Nin, who was a fellow weap that Niggle saw as a father figure and was killed off protecting her from an assassin sent by The Banshee Council (a group of weap that ran the law system and government of the Second World)

Samantha, who decades before Niggle met Marten, had a crush on Niggle and tried to date her. Their relationship didn’t work out, and do to Niggle not realizing it was wrong, turned her into a mannequin.

And Chattel, a weap that was sent to track down Niggle for braking weap law to be with Marten, but in the end sided with Niggle and fought against The Banshee Council.

Before the story ended Chattel had grown wings and had become convinced that it was The Winged One, a being said to bring back the world of the ancients and bring about the downfall of man.