Raising the Dead

Murmur came into the clearing. It was as though he knew of their speaking of him.

Francesco plucked a moss from the side of the tree and casually threw it into the pot before him.

“Hode would like to interview you” he addressed Murmur, “you can trust him with the truth”.

“There is little to say Franco - you know already all I know - which is nothing. I have no special prayer or secret, there isn’t anything to impart in explanation or corporeal - no elixir, no unholy pact, it just happens.” He had not meant to dismiss Hode with this, but he just had.

The ancient Elf was impressed - he had never heard the boy speak before and had considered him to be a simpleton. Even to gaze into his aura was to see but a pale blue eminence; there was not one thing to indicate that this man was a saint, or a fey, or a healer.

“I have faith” Murmur said - looking strongly now into Hode’s eyes.

“I believe in the resurrection… of all men, of all things.”

“And,” he concluded: “there are times, when by God only, this comes to happen.”

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Renewal of Life

“You seem troubled?” he [Francis] pushed for Hode’s thoughts and kept on: “Surely all life is a blessing, is it not? I have been witness, as you, to miracles almost daily … what say you to this truth?”

Hode felt this renewal of life to be unnatural, but did not know why his inner soul objected to it.

As an Elvish adept, he had seen the faces of death present in countless ways to the human folk, but nothing like this had he heard of or witnessed.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Serpents of the Sea

“I don’t know how he does it Uncle” said Francis as he stirred the soup one more time. The flame beneath it had gone out, but he liked to put the wooden oar into the pot and watch the turnips dance to the top. This one had mixed meats also - they had fared well with the local’s contributions this week.

Francesco was talking to Hode concerning Murmur who had recently outdone himself - managing to resuscitate an entire boatload of fishermen whose vessel had been caught by the treacherous seaweeds of the coast - entangled and strangled, it had been held there, whilst the men on board starved to death waiting for help.

Eventually the ship was trawled in and the thirteen corpses had begun their purification. Yet all thirteen Murmur managed to revive. Even the oldest - a Germanic steersman - was said now appearing as many years younger.

“There was no fish? Why was there no fish for them to eat while they waited so?”

“Just treacherous thick black weed, serpents of the sea as they call it” Francis added.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Desert was Lighting up

“It genuinely scares me” she added, looking up, speaking with her elongated vowel Aussie vernacular. He really did not care what words were being said … Calvin had fallen for her and nothing else seemed to matter in this minute.

The sun was descending and the desert was lighting up with its best. The filter spread across the landscape before them - as they sat on the roof side by side. Calvin took her hand into his scarred one.

"You ‘complete’ me", he laughed - sensing her to be soothed by his touch, and looking genuinely happy.

“Does that make me a vampire then?” he jibed.

“God I hope not!” she kicked back. And then, on that note, they kissed.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Vampire Thing

“Please don’t be upset with me Cal” she said. This new familiarity was something different also. Ever since he had stepped down from management, giving over the share majority to Charley’s people, she had seen him in a different light…. as being more approachable.

His head cast low. He was not proud of some of the things he had done. But then …

“I just had the horrible thought - you know … if we are using human materials - even human ‘waste’ to make up these cements and plasmas, well, what is the difference between that and what vampires do? It is kind of a vampire thing, isn’t it? To live off other humans - to take their blood, their life, for your own?”

“But if you say that, then what about organ transplantation and fetal donation?” he said almost triumphantly.

“Same same” she said meekly. Robyn sensed she was now on dangerous ground.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Several Moons Later

Outwardly the Church had appeared generous and supportive - and in their own words, they were ‘inclusive’ to the fringe communities. But every gift has its price - either to the giver or the gifted, it comes with its cost.

There was an unsavoury undercurrent between the two men. There existed an anger fuelled by an unrequited passion. Francis had become the obsession of the curious Pontiff. It was as though he wanted to get inside Francis, and watch him succumb - he wanted to know him, body, mind and soul.

There became a complex scent between them.

Francis refused to go back.

You cannot know what you simply cannot understand.

Several moons later the Pontiff took poison by his own hand.*

His death was recorded as being due to ill health.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances



*Innocent III died suddenly at Perugia on 16 June 1216.

Summoned by the Pope

Giotto 

When the elderly Pope summoned him [Francis] one last time, he had refused. This was something no child of the Church would ever do. But he did. He flat out refused.

Firstly, there had been the argument about the gentle creatures and their places in heaven. The Church had been adamant that animals did not have souls, and therefore his services with the small creatures, were considered to be no more than an empty bluff - a charade - a performance - a novelty. Francis was ordered to address the mortals only.

The Holy Father, added to this, had placed stipulations, and confinements upon the activity of his Brotherhood.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

"In 1209, Francis of Assisi led his first eleven followers to Rome to seek permission from Pope Innocent III to found a new religious order which was ultimately granted....

After several days, the pope agreed to admit the group informally, adding that when God increased the group in grace and number, they could return for an official admittance. The group was tonsured. This was important in part because it recognized Church authority and protected his followers from possible accusations of heresy, as had happened to the Waldensians decades earlier. Though Pope Innocent initially had his doubts, following a dream in which he saw Francis holding up the Basilica of St. John Lateran (the cathedral of Rome, thus the 'home church' of all Christendom), he decided to endorse Francis's order. This occurred, according to tradition, on 16 April 1210, and constituted the official founding of the Franciscan Order." 

Detachment

Perhaps Francis could renounce much of the world, simply because he was not of this world.

It is possible that his detachment, and ability to see with spiritual eyes through the glamour of the material existence - possible, that this was a wisdom known by an ageless heart; one that could sense the need of the many, that would far outcry the needs of his own.

Yet he was not without his own want or will either.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Dangerous Discoveries

It was unnatural for a human to endure this - and Puck felt a little responsible. For it had been his arrow that had caught the man in the first place.

It was only meant to sail past his head to get his attention, but instead it nicked him from behind.

Being also an elvin arrow, it very possibly contributed to the magic which was to follow.

Puck thought of Pietro rather fondly really. He had showed great kindness to Francesco - had always given his best to him. He was a good man, and now an earthbound ghoul of a kind.

Puck had gone after him that day to take him to see Francis where he was camped, but it ended rather poorly. He really did feel responsible - mainly because he was.

And then there was the problem of Johnstone enterprises. Taking over the greater shareholding was one thing in the short term, but not enough to stop its momentum as before.

Johnstone Snr had made some dangerous discoveries just prior to his death. And Humanity, in his opinion, would be better off without these evolutionary contributions. He sighed. It was definitely time for a holiday away from this place.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Soul Migration

It all came down to this: Pietro had suffered an accidental death, and was resurrected by a very gifted simpleton who was touched with the ability to restore life, when life was depleted.

Murmur had helped Pietro reconstruct a human form from the materials in the ditch in which he had died - but (and this was the important part) not all of his new body exhumed had been human - there had been dead animal and leafy matter as well - and the new Peter had in part been all things - at least his body had been.

And this was fine, yet for some inexplicable reason when it came for that body to die, the soul could not leave the worldly realm to depart as it ordinarily might, flying free into the cosmic spheres. It was, as it were, detained.

Pietro then went on to find another, and another form to inhabit, and as the years went on, right up to this century, and to great angst, his soul was still forced to migrate thusly.

Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Prayer Box

The great lion shook his head, and stared very hard at the following.

No-one moved. They did not, they dared not.

"Please can you tell us just one thing?” they asked - for they knew that just one good truth might carry them through to the eternal life.

“I cannot tell you just one thing. I cannot tell you anything. I can try to explain. I can sometimes describe. But I cannot tell you how to live your life, or how to find the eternal answer.”

“Yet we have heard your ear is close to the door of the gods … and so therefore, can you tell us what it is the gods speak off in the silence, and in their meetings?”

“I do not listen, I dare not listen, at their great door - for caution my own ears will explode.” He said this with a rumbling purr, and then continued:

“Give me your prayers and I will put them in a box, and I will keep them for a century in safekeeping; and then at the end of this age we will take them from their safe-nest and you will see each one will have been fulfilled. This, I can tell you.”

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Suitable Cadaver

Now, returning to George and Johnstone, who were watching Chips closely as he was struggling for breath. They followed Peter-Pietro into the adjoining lab and watched him enter the cadaver through its nose. As soon as it moved, they both knew they were watching something they had not seen before.

“Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” George said to Johnstone with a voice thick with want. Neither of the two had reconciled to death, being far too invested in the lives they knew.

As they watched the Asian man push his way out from the glass box they nodded to one another in assent.

“Looks like we have ourselves a project” said Johnstone rubbing his bald head, thinking out loud. George pulled out his pocket book and scribbled, “Project rebirth. 1. Find a suitable cadaver.”

“Got it” he said.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Human Path

Puck was unusually adept with his transactions - his evolution had taken him into the human path, to the point where he not only shared blood with them, but also karma.

There became a certain compelling to follow. Even if he had wanted, he could not simply retire to the etheric world, and live out the next decade of centuries, removed from their strife. No, he was involved.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Spirits have a Knack

Spirits have a knack of being able to teleport to where the action is with rapid enterprise. It is not a conscious action most of the time - but more an energetic response to the life around them.

Whether it is active in the other worldly spheres or on the earth plane, a spirit can glide into events within milliseconds of this happening.

A good example of this is of earthly catastrophes, whereupon thousands and sometimes hundreds of thousands, of spirits will be drawn to a site of unusual activity. You can see them watching on.

And for the humans who cross over during those episodes of calamity, they only perceive a body of light at that time - not being able to distinguish the faces within that light.

Similarly the beings of Faerie can wilfully drop in and out of worldly life, remaining for the most part, invisible to it.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

George Befriended

Johnstone Senior had no idea that he had passed away leaving his extraordinary enterprise to his young, and only son. He worked harder than ever- very similarly to George the retired health inspector, who along the way had befriended him.

George accompanied Johnstone to every session, shadowing his newly-found friend and mentor. For what was a laboratory and manufactory but another type of kitchen?

A very sophisticated kitchen, George thought appreciatively, who was finally amongst the order and cleanliness he had yearned for- sanitary, ordered, a measured scientific establishment.

And because George was the only one to actually speak with Johnstone Senior, he accepted him as his assistant and confidant.

The two had quickly become inseparable.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Dream Romance

Charley had dreams - all kinds of dreams … some that were so real she could never be sure … and then there were the kind where she would picture herself in the arms of that one man who loved her and knew her like no other.

This man could see right into her soul, and accept her for the halfling she was.

He would be poetic, but not a poet. Masculine, yet never angry or forceful. He could be a master of words - though hardly speak. He would want her with the most urgent desire, yet wait for her to come to him.

This man was someone she could spend days with in perfect contentedness, in a space between them that was theirs alone.

When was it she had first begun to have feelings for Francis? She could not recall, only that now, right now, she wanted him to love her in return.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Elf-publishing

Self-publishing took on a whole other meaning when it came to the Elvish. Within minutes their works can manifest in a snap and they will be on the shelves.

One way of identifying a magical work is to examine its isbn - and if it has thirty three numbers you will know it is a book that is printed in fairyland.

Elves never interfere with the common laws of men.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Pondering

“Thus it was called pondering."

He stopped writing, and looked at this last sentence in a satisfied way.

In his spare time Puck had been penning a manuscript - a sort of self-help novella that he visualised as being the year’s number one bestseller.

There was of course an Amazonian raft of advice-type books and a sea of subjective philosophy upon which that raft bobbed and bounced upon.

However Puck himself enjoyed his own thought - so much so, he felt obliged to share it.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

At Stalemate

Francesco had pledged a life of poverty, yet at every turn his celebrity had attracted gratuities that he would quickly give away.

He noted, his entire life had brought him material blessings which upon denying would return again and again threefold. There was a magic to this that even he did not understand.

However, he keenly felt the incongruity of poverty about him.

Compelled by an electric empathy, his spiritual nerves could not withstand the suffering or need of another.

The Pope, on the other hand, did not perceive this and unwittingly took the actions of Francis to be an ungrateful proverbial slap in the face to Rome.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Candied Roses

"I offer you bitter orange peel and candied roses, and you refuse it. Do you wish to further insult my generosity?

“Publicly, privately you continue to be seen to be more holier than me? I will not, will not, abide this humiliation."

“I do not thinketh my wretched self to be holier than thou, oh most beloved - and I swear this that was not my intent.”

“Then why do you continuously aggravate my charity thusly?” the Pope had piped, finishing with a squeak from the lungs, dabbing his weeping eyes with an embroidered handkerchief.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Bruce Lee

The young vet [Robyn] had been offered the employment of a lifetime, being given the role of co-ordinator of Research materials, and had already fluffed it.

It still did not explain the naked Asian man who was clearly alive, and now standing before her.

Francis, who had not been far behind Puck, entered the room, caught sight of ‘Bruce Lee’ and advanced toward him with the warmth of ten suns. The two embraced. It was an unusual, but touching sight.

Calvin, who had just come in from the courtyard had followed Francis into the lab and was surprised to see the men as they were.

“The dog died” Puck said explainingly.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Cadaver Orders

“I thought we had canceled the cadaver orders” Puck said disapprovingly as he had entered the cold room briskly. He held a raging contempt for such practices and it was the first instruction he had actually given after taking over the pharmaceutical complex.

“Back order” said Robyn sheepishly.

She was embarrassed.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Made in China

With an almost macabre sense of satisfaction Chips found himself to be human again. But with this came a new skill-set to re-learn also.

For as a dog, in his previous incarnation, he had acquired the tastes and the thinking of an animal’s ways - it went with the body, so to speak.

And equally so, so much of being a man, simply comes from the body also, and not the indwelling consciousness within. The body has its own wants and needs, and it was painfully apparent that breathing was the most necessary one right now.

Of course the box that he was confined in was not constructed to actually keep anybody prisoner - it was in fact a container to house a sterile cadaver, that was ‘donated’ just hours before for the lab-coats to run tests on.

An aged man from China, with tanned skin and brown sapphire eyes looked back at him in the reflection of the stainless lid above. With a push, and a crash Chips lifted the lid up and off.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Securing a Body

Chips awoke in laboratory one, with a nuclear headache, that had exploded on his descent back into life.

He had secured a space inside this body in rapid time, and although he was only metres from where he had left Francis and Puck, he had no idea of their whereabouts, nor they of him.

Chips blinked hard to try to clear his vision, and moments later discovered he was having difficulty breathing. A glass walled coffin encased his new body and the icy cold air surrounding him was already becoming exhausted in rapid time.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Chips is Dead

Robyn was crying in the court yard when Calvin found her, early that morning.

He did not know what to say - he did not feel very good with such things; he just stood there not wanting to back away.

“I did not know that you have been unhappy here” he said.

Her eyes were red. It seemed like she had been crying for a very long time.

“You can tell me” he whispered. “Tell me what is on your mind, I promise I will listen.”

“Chips is dead” she spluttered, and then let out a wail.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Motherly Concern

Hannah-Mary then interrupted them.

At thirty-two the woman could have been mistaken for Mirabella’s sister … they appeared so alike, with the exception of a thickened waist and generous breast of her mother, they bore exactly the same countenance.

She put her arm around her beloved daughter.

“I promise to take care of him - he will not want while you are away.”

She also was saddened, but this was because she did not want her daughter to leave.

Monastical life is no life for a young girl, she had told her. But what if this husband would take the life from her? How could she be sure that he would treat her Mirabella well? She shuddered at the thought of relations, having only one dark memory where she was forced beyond her will.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Bear Friend

“Granoldi” she said, placing her bare hand gently on his nobbled paw, “I am to marry quite soon, and with this I needs-must go far away to make my home. My husband to be, lives seventy leagues from this town, and it is without choice I must take residence there beside him.”

She stopped as her eyes began to mist over. Mirabella deeply drew breath and began very sadly:

“This means my dearest friend, my darling brother, that I shall not be able to see you tomorrow, or the next, or the next after that. And I am beside myself in this. I do not want this to be our final greeting, or goodbye.”

He could tell that her mood was serious. His eyes had filmed over with white, and blended with his fur, and this being so, he could not read her face.

Mirabella herself had tanned skin and jet black hair. Both her features and frame were fine, and her tunic was of pale blue wool. Her cape was of the same cloth, and she took it off, to put over her bear-friend’s shoulders.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Bearly there

After Francesco’s passing Mirabella, now sixteen years of age, was visiting the Friar’s sanctuary to take presents to the elderly bear, who to everyone’s surprise was still walking the earth.

He had been feeble from the start, and because of his white hair and the crippling chains, his arthritis had caused him to be sore in the joints, and displaced unevenly throughout - everyone had assumed him to be aged many years before, when he had first arrived.

Even still, he must have now surpassed twenty they conjectured. Granoldi loved Mirabella before all others and the two shared memories of an earlier life of sunlit forests and carefree days. They sat in an un-awkward silence that was resplendent with this happy time of the past and the present, converging in each other’s company.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Spit & Vanish

The grey Weimaraner shuddered, his head fell to one side, and his tongue drooped out from his mouth. He was gone.

Puck put the lid onto the beaker with haste, and a fine blue mist seemed to be floating within the vessel.

“I don’t feel good about this” Francesco said flatly. He had been dreading this moment - and had carried the guilt of his father’s predicament for a very long time all told. He continued:

“How sure are you about what you have done?” He looked at the beaker … the blue light had dissipated and there was nothing much to be seen in there at all.

He took it out of Puck’s hands and gazed into it woefully.

“There’s nothing in here, is there?” he said, now stating the obvious.

“Nup, guess it didn’t work after all.” said Puck in agreement.

“Our one chance, and you lost him”, Francis said complainingly.

Puck put his hand on his shoulder. “Yep” he said awkwardly.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Over the Hills & Far Away

"Quick, hand me that jar."

Francis looked up at Puck, and then to his side where he was pointing. There was a glass beaker with a chrome lid on a bottom shelf, near where he was holding Chips in his arms.

He reached over and took it and threw it up into Puck’s hands. Puck caught it, rapidly unwound its lid, and then spat a little spittle into it. He then placed a hand onto Anon, whose eyes were too heavy now to open, and he whispered in the old dog’s ear.

“We’ve got you buddy. We’ll figure this out, I promise you, this time, we will figure it out. Just go into the jar and we can transport you over the hills and far away.”

Francis eyed Puck with concern. He loved Anon and distrusted this idea. Especially upon hearing ‘over the hills and far away’ - what was that? Puck had not been himself of late. He said nothing.

“It's a fine expression” the Pookhah said, reading his thoughts with a little indignation.

“It sounds a bit loopy”, said Francesco, momentarily distracted.

“It's appropriate” said Puck - “where else is one to go?”

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Spirit is Swift

Usually, when a mortal departs his fleshly frame, he ascends up through the gates of death, and out into the cosmic spray. There, his etherial starry body takes the soul into the realms where he is best suited - up and away from the concerns of the earthly world and its impulses.

The spirit is swift, and knows the heavens intimately. For this is the natural home to all men's souls, and more natural than the life previously known.

Now this time became very much as it was before - all Pietro could contemplate, was that of finding his son who had run away, now so many years ago.

His spirit flew over the paddocks, and past the fruit fields, through to the mountains where the camp of Francis had grown to a castle community.

In a stone wall there, was a fountain trickling within, and beside, on a pedestal, was a bronze head that looked just like his beloved boy. He knew he had come to the right place.

Pietro’s spirit dashed through the vast corridors, searching within, sailed its way past the cells and vestibules, frantically seeking his son.

Pietro-Peter stopped back at the bronze, looking longingly at the face - to then notice an inscription beneath the piece that read:

Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone
~ 1181 - 1226.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances