A Heart of Gold

“Tinsel, could you find me some gold? Could you, would you fetch me something to work with?” Jonathon asked hopefully.

Tinsel was a tiny flutter-by: a fairy that was no bigger than a large moth. She understood John’s request perfectly, and because she liked him she returned three days later with a walnut shell in which he found concealed within its inner pocket a hump of gold dust.

“This is all that I need” he said appreciatively, “I give thee many thanks my friend.”

When Jonathon had completed his project he approached Isabelle saying: “I have made thee a trinket.”

Jon had perfected his metal work in the community, borrowing the Elven tools, learning from them their specialised craft.

She looked at him wonderingly. Although safe from harm whilst living in this spiritual oasis, her time in Robin’s forest had been somewhat lonely. Prior to this life, her former years she reflected again, had been desolate - every minute she felt absent of happiness and without a true companion. Marriage to Robertus had not solved the wanting - it had been a timely relief to be released from that troth.

She drew out from the polished shell a fine chain that glittered in the shifting light from the shimmering trees.

“The Council told me it is a good charm to have upon oneself for protection dear Isabelle - a mirror of gold. Its size is of no import - for its miracle is that when you sleep the Fae around you will take delight in their own image, and protect you by their good nature; whilst the Demons who may approach will see their own faces in its reflection and runaway afearing them.” He laughed at his own thought, for the faces of the demonic are indeed hideous.

The golden mirror he had struck was in the shape of a little heart - a flat piece of gold he had cut and polished. He watched her face for approval yet this dear woman looked worried.

“You do not like it? It was all the gold I had to work with … and silver, I was told, would not perform the task.”

“My boy it is beautiful,” she said quietly, perplexed by its message. “What does it mean?” she asked.

“It means I love you.” he said quietly.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Vision of the Past

Mercedes looked keenly at one of the many artworks adorning the gold papered walls. Mostly the paintings hung depicted various forms of torture, however the one she kept returning to seemed sweet enough; portraying a small child sitting in a gutter with her head down, staring at an empty cola can at her little feet. The toddler was without clothes. 

“This one is not half bad” she said out loud, to Alex who was plastering cream on his thighs and beyond.

“You might think that,” he said despondently … see the rat in the shadows behind? The artist used blood, real blood, mixed into his acrylic, for authenticity. Here he laughed a fake laugh, a nervous laugh to conceal his own distemper. He held back telling more of what he knew of this painting - Mercedes did not need to hear the worst - he felt proudly protective of her.

Alex wanted more and more to be back on the rig, as far away as he could get from the sadistic narcissist he had fallen in love with. Self loathing sank in upon him yet again. He closed his eyes and tried to remember the smell of the sea air, the spray on his face, the salt, the sounds, and the freedom that came with the feeling of being alone amidst the heaving waves. 

A memory stirred - one he did not recognise: he was back at the beach on the sand, standing by a very large pitted rock. Yes, he was there watching another man approaching, one who wore a very large folded hood connected to a broad long weather-worn leather cape - it seemed like he had stepped right out from a medieval movie. 


How odd, he thought to himself - these flashes of fiction had been getting more vivid day by day. “Are you feeling hungry Sadie?” he called over to Mercedes who was fixing her hair. 

“Sure, what do you feel like?”


“Think I’ll call down and see if they can arrange some fish and chips.” he said, clean forgetting the stranger and his vision of the past. 

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Wealth Cannot Buy Good Taste

Romulus was a Forbes endowed, all-powerful, worldly rich individual, who, with his immense holdings, managed to interfere in the lives of millions of people, for better or for worse - his influence was everywhere. He considered this to be his right, and with his notion of supreme entitlement he had suppressed and overtaken the wishes of his heart and soul lifetimes earlier. His commonsense of spirit had left him entirely, along with his angel that he had repelled forevermore.

“I want that bear!” he snapped at Mercedes, who was adjusting her bra around swollen nipples that were tender from the rings Romulus had insisted she have pierced with. 

“I want that fu’kin Bear”, he snarled angrily to Alex, who had just received a heavy beating, and no amount of coke could mask the pain this time ... his groin was purple from that contraption. He looked over to Mercedes and with the solidarity of the oppressed; they understood one another completely in a very meaningful moment.

“Why is it the guy never sleeps?” she complained shortly after Romulus had left the apartment.

“I know - I sure would like to see that” agreed Alex, slowly sitting himself down on the edge of the bed; its black satin sheets crumpled into a small pile waiting for housekeeping to come and collect them.

The entire floor was one enormous room situated high in the clouds on the seventy-eighth. Its windows however, were filled with decorator landscape views, scenic photographs of country USA - it was impossible to tell the time of day or night by looking at them or to take in the sky or the scenery beneath. Some of the panes doubled as video screens also. Alex always assumed there might be recording devices imbedded in them as well.

This enormous room depended therefore on artificial lighting, which if anything was always far too bright and uncomfortable for normal eyes, except for those places in the recessed spaces that glowed a dull dark red.

There was also a sunken lounge and a small bathing pool tiled in black and a circular bed. The decor was bad taste 60’s and actually designed by Romulus himself, whose primary objective in both life and design was to put one’s teeth on edge. Even the latrine and bidet was exposed, being behind just a single glass partition, for he liked and insisted on being able to see his companions at all times, and as far as he was concerned, the more uncomfortable they were, the more excited he became.

The only exit from the apartment was the lift that had bronze gargoyles positioned at each side of the doors, with sensors hidden within their gaping mouths. Only Romulus held the card key for this lift and to the hotel’s switchboard; and so Alex and Mercedes were dependent on him for them to be able to leave. There was no fire escape; at least not one that they knew of. No escape was at all easy. 

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Fountain of Universal Fire

“Come over here my child and sit by the fire.”

Sylvia cringed. She had been a spirit of the water for as long as she could remember.

Mother Earth saw her recoil.

“Some true warmth is exactly what is needed right now,” she said in her best relaxing voice, as she took the pale hand gently and guided her to a seat of crystal that was cushioned with plump kapok.

Sylvia did as was instructed and took a seat by the flame.

This marvel was not a fuelled fire: no tinder or coal spurned its comforting light, for this was a fountain of universal fire, borrowed from the one incandescent Cosmic flame.

Sylvia watched its opaline colours flash through its dance, climbing from a very large golden bowl, radiating what she felt to be pure and exalted happiness. She sat back and closed her eyes, finally settling within herself.

Mother Earth was concerned, tears quickly sprang to her eyes. There had been an exodus of nature spirits evacuating their caretaker roles arriving at her door of late. They had all reported the very same thing to her of their experience in the world, each with a story to relate, all with the same belittling complaint: Fear.

Fear was not normally within the Kingdoms as a malaise - it was virtually unknown for the spiritual beings who generally and genuinely had nothing to be afraid of.

However, this poison had come directly from an unearthly source - and it had appeared all at once; like a filth-weed in her garden that had crawled its way with subterfuge stealing the goodness from ground and air above, and all around.

“This will not do” she said out loud, draping a fine wool blanket over the now sleeping Sylvia. She then gave instructions to her attendant to care for the troubled youth, and departed the wintered hemisphere for the rocky roads.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Klutz

Klutz, (a distant cousin of the great Kybosh), engineered success with the invention of the very first curve ball; and later was revered for perfecting the Haikus of the fourteenth and fifteenth century.

He made notoriety also with the colour Aubergine - a tone that no one individual could match before Pan-tone, a system where the great god Pan brought a numeric code to identify, standardise, and satisfy the conundrums of colour.

Klutz was never discreet. He would not hide in plain sight like the others of his spiritual heritage.

He was extremely passionate about everything, and everyone - never hesitant, greatly impulsive - patron Saint to the comedians, muse to chefs, and inspiration to all of the little people under the age of three.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Lady of the Lake

Alan Lee

Sylvia had not been abducted, but rather had fled after being forced from her undwellable lake that had become so stagnant and defiled her spirit could not withstand its influence any longer.

She circled the sphere twice over before winding her way into the currents, moving then through to the starry fields that were peppered with infant meteorites - who with a rambunctious playfulness, hurled themselves forcefully about her, energetically skimming the skies in circles, seeking out their place here and there.

The older ones pursued her path as far as they could follow, pulling at her skirt, slowing her speed.

Sylvia was searching for that familiar beam that would take her to the Grand-mama’s house … yet it was difficult to find it amongst the competing brilliance. Every star, a human soul watching her movements with a curious fixation …

Grand-mama had four houses in the mortal world, and Sylvia did not know which of the four she might find her in. Her fearfulness alarmed her all the more, and a coldness crept into her psyche. She needed to know that her Grand-mama was doing well - and that the mortal World had not been affected … yet.

* * *

“I’m not going back” she pleaded woefully. Memories that made her skin crawl flooded over her. She, the once Lady of the Lake, had been pursued and captured some centuries earlier, with not one who had come to save her. Evicted yet again.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

The Chamber: Frollo & Fable

The wind wept wherever evil went, and a smell of decay, of defecation, followed the princess all her days long.

The Princess had never married, however she did take a great many suitors into her night room - who would do as instructed … tapping twice in the annex and thrice on the door - usually at the mid of night, led by a courtier or mistress to tend to her royalness.

If the candidates failed to satisfy the Princess they were put to death the following morning.

Not one youth had survived her expectations, and this unhappy sequence took so many lives that the army was debilitated thereby, and eligible bachelors were now in short supply.

Her search for ‘love’ persisted nightly, with the routine execution to follow for more than half a century; and she, although now exceeding seventy years, still called upon the youth of the surrounding towns, to entertain her wants and desires.

Any man who refused this calling was immediately shot through the heart with an entire sheath of arrows.

When Frollo was called to her parlour, his own mother had cautioned him saying:

“The chamber, my son, has two doors - one to go in by and another to leave by. I fear for you. I do not believe that all of those sturdy young men were later conscripted to the army to never return - no, no, we have all heard from the townspeople of the axeman and his daily duty.

“I say this to you: kill the witch and kill her fast - and then leave before the new light when you are to be collected. I see no other way.”

Fable, Frollo’s angel, overheard his mother’s scheming and pleaded on behalf of his conscience to consider the impropriety of this crime. He weighed the decision tentatively, overcome with a deepened anxiety for Frollo’s eternal prospects.

“Also, and not precluding”, spoke his mother, as she handed to him a fine silver carry knife … “I should very much like you to avenge the death of Zachary” (a neighbour who had been called and never returned, some twenty years before).

She had then wrung her hands together, reliving the anguish of this recollection. She pressed in his other hand a passing gift of a single sweet wrapt in rice paper.

With one last kiss to the cheek, her eyes followed him for the length of the road, now caught in the enclave of the royal carriages. She cried a mother’s tear and returned to her empty home forlorn.

* * *

Rap rap rap

Tap tap tap

The chamber door swung open. “A Princess!” he exclaimed out loud.

Frollo had prepared himself for a woman old enough to be his grandmother, yet instead his eyes landed upon the most enticing maiden he had ever seen.

Her skin was bronze, her night dress shimmered milk white, and her naked breasts sat atop a sash of silk and pearls. Her demeanour, if anything, was frightened.

“Have you bewitched me?” he asked tentatively.

Frollo had heard tales from the North of the hags at Delphi … and the lore of the sodden mermaids, who also were far from what they seemed.

“No.” She replied. “I have not hazarded you with magic - you only see my true self.”

His mind became downcast for he perceived that he could no more be a match for this wondrous lady than the suitors who had come before him. He fumbled in his pocket and covertly drew the fine silver knife; and when she was not looking at him, he slid it into the fire grate.

From his other pocket Frollo took the sweet that his mother had given him and he offered it tenderly. She seemed pleased.

“I shall plant this in my garden” she said.

“No no, it is to eat” he said.

“What use has a spirit for this?” she said off-handedly - “I have long been deceased my boy - having perished by the hands of my very first lover.”

“This I did not know” he said confused yet again by his circumstance and now feeling very foolish, and somewhat disappointed.

* * *

You see we die a little every day, and then, come the morning, we are reborn. Seventy two years, the unsatisfied woman is the soul who exchanges each day for the next - until that final day, the day of their own death.

We are but each character within - this is the secret of this fable of the soul. We are the youth, with fresh eyes coming to the aged, yet desirous soul. We are the princess who forfeits each moment for the next. We are verily the axeman, who does not allow the memories of the days events to linger. Yes, we are all of the characters within this tale.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series