Alex

It's obviously intriguing, there's definitely a lot of questions to be answered, but the first order of business is to find out whether they're worth being answered.

I see that you plan on making this into a novel or at least posting more of it, in which case I can tell you now, you haven't given anything sufficient enough to judge how it'll go. There's potential, but that potential lays mostly in its gaps, and it has a lot of gaps. For example--what are they doing in a cave? Why does the Void Child have no tangible facial features? Where did the child come from? What's going on? There's nothing solid I can hold onto here, nothing that catches my eye and makes me think This Could Definitely Go Somewhere . There's also nothing that makes me turn away, nothing that makes me thing This Can Only End Horribly. And that's mostly because there's not much here. No emotional detail, only scarce character development, it's more of a teaser to a short story than an actual short story. So if you're asking "Should I make a novel out of this?", the short answer is "I don't know."

If you want a long answer, though...

The Beginning

“Hello.” The Void Child looked up, the indentations that served as eyes making a blinking motion. A little boy of about seven or eight years stood in front of it. He had hair and eyes as black as the Void and was wearing a grey wool shirt, black pants, and black galoshes. He was holding a red balloon, bright in the dark, monotonous Void.

This is our introduction to the characters, and it doesn't really introduce much. Granted, lots of stories feel like they start out this way--straight into the story, letting the readers figure things out for themselves. But in reality, most of those stories actually have something else going on. They go straight into the story, but they make sure they have a Character Establishing scene so the reader can infer what's going on without being confused. If a mystery starts out in the interrogation room the Bad Cop will be banging and threatening the suspect while the Good Cop will be holding his partner back. If a romance starts in the bedroom one Lover might be preparing for work while the other might be begging for the other to stay in bed a little while longer. Start out with something familiar, branch out into your own thing.

In this case, it's confusing because there is no Character Establishing scene; at least, not for the Void Child. The Void Child sort of exists, and Jamie is a vaguely courageous child (based entirely off his interaction with the strange being). If you had the Void Child quivering in fear or perhaps leaning in curiously, we'd have a hint of who the Void Child is. As it is, though, the audience doesn't know if we should be afraid of the Void Child (considering their strange looks) or if we should be rooting for it.

And then there's also the case of background. I don't demand to know where a scene is set in the first paragraph, but usually by the second paragraph there ought to be a sentence of description describing the setting--currently the only note of description I'm getting is the Void or a dark cavern, so I'm quite literally lost in space here, I can't tell anything besides a dark abyss with a red balloon floating inside. There seems to be a source of light as the characters can see each other, but I have no clue.

The italicized and the bolded sentences suggest to the reader that there are more than one void, a Void Child and a Void Place, which may take a couple of rereads after a while because it is sort of confusing.

On the Matter of Character Interaction

Alright, there isn't much plot going on here (we'll get to the premise later on), but there's a lot of character interaction and I think that's what you're mostly going for this time. In a work as intimate as this one, the character interaction is the one element that shines, and if it falls everything else does too.

I have no idea why, but I feel like this would make a good Playdead game opening. I'm talking mostly because it reminds me of Limbo's monochrome and hellish state, but it wouldn't be a silent beginning--it would have Jamie as an NPC that the Void Child must chase around because they're friends, and the Void Child must save Jamie from whatever problems might come up in the Void. It would be a cool My Best Friend is A Shadow sort of game, that might get really sad in the end when questions are answered.

And I'm talking video games because, while this definitely isn't a video game, it has the depth of a video game story. As a straightforward plot, it's sort of shallow, but if the player character pauses or explores the game a bit they'll discover more and more as the game goes on. And I bring this up because this isn't necessarily a good thing--it's good for games to be simple, since they have the advantage of interactivity and the fact that the player just wants to go from Point A to Point B, but it's not so simple in prose stories. While the plot often must be straightforward, the character interaction and development must be clear and complex enough to be interesting, because the reader isn't holding a controller. They're watching, not interacting. You have to convince them to make a personal attachment, unlike video games, where (usually) the personal attachment is automatic since they're actually playing as the protagonist.

Thus, while something as simple as this can be intriguing, there has to be a clear dynamic going on, some glue keeping the characters together and some conflict threatening to keep them apart. As of now, we may have something along the lines of loneliness or pure curiosity, and while that's okay, the latter definitely has me questioning how it'll go down. Because pure curiosity isn't the most intense glue, and it's definitely not something some readers will stick around for. Just because there are questions doesn't mean they have to be answered. There must be some pay-off after they're answered, some sort of reward for the characters.

So I ask--what does the Void Child lose by befriending Jamie? What does the Void Child gain by befriending Jamie? Why should we root for these two characters being friends? You really didn't answer any of these questions, so the character interaction feels shallow, no matter how interesting the characters might be. You don't have to tell us why, not directly. If you mentioned how the Void Child never had a friend before, you've already answered all three of those questions: the Void Child is wandering into territory he doesn't know about and can lose a lot if he does something wrong, the Void Child may gain a friend and may learn new emotions and experiences, we should root for these characters because we want to see both of them grow. See? Simple. Granted, it ought to be a little more than that, but I think you get the point here. You want the audience to root for your characters, especially if they're going to be main players in a story, and therefore you must give a reader these reasons to keep reading.

Premise

The premise is weird, but not nearly weird enough to pique interest. It's not "Five-Headed Dragon and Old Woman Who Secretly Lives in Your Home Runs For Mayor" weird, but it is the sort of thing you'd stare at and maybe shrug afterwards. And that's because it's not really challenging anything. It might be challenging conventional friendships, but then again plenty of children books have done that. It might be challenging the readers' sanity, but then again, HP Lovecraft. It could be challenging a lot of things, but it doesn't really show its stance.

And in any case, it doesn't have to challenge anything. But it does have to have something interesting going on with it. "Boy meets strange being in strange world and decides to befriend it" could be interesting, if it had some sort of conflict within it. But the conflict here isn't entirely clear. There's nothing threatening looming in the distance, there's nothing the reader might stick around for to see if the characters survive or not. It's just a couple of things that happen to occur in the story, and that's quite it. It doesn't make the best premise, but again since it's so vague, I'm not sure if it makes a bad one either.

Which brings me to my final pillar,

The Conflict

I talked about this a lot, but I think I need to detail this further. Most stories have an External and Internal Conflict, EC being the thing a character fights for in-plot, and IC being how the character develops throughout the story. There's got to be a good balance between these two things, but that doesn't mean one can't dominate over the other. In your case, it looks like the IC might take over the EC, as there isn't much EC going on. But here's the thing--there isn't much IC going on, either. The reader is just left to guess.

What are these characters trying to do? What's stopping these characters? Why should we root for these characters (pay attention to this question, as it pops up in everything)? We see something happen, we can guess what might happen next, but there's no real battle fought here. Not even a mental battle is explicitly stated, it's mostly subtextual. It doesn't feel like a story. It feels like a set piece, again, a teaser. Something that's supposed to impress the reader purely on a superficial level, most likely paying attention to the beautiful prose or the atmosphere. However, the prose isn't fantastic (it's not bad, either), and the atmosphere, while intriguing, is also nothing to be wowed about. I came here to read a story, and unfortunately there's not much of that going on here. Yet, I have no idea if that'll change.

My suggestion is consider what I've said while checking the rest of your finished work. If you answer all of the questions above, post more, see what happens. As of now though, it's too early to judge.

--Elliot.