Not Francis

Charley had been avoiding her father for days now - her phone was turned off and she had arranged the staff to bring their meals. Surely they could do without her for a few days? Besides, she had little idea what her role was ‘moving forward’. Sure, she deserved some time away.

There was a sharp rap at the door. Her eyes went to Franco who was plugging his pipe, sitting beside the balcony window, wearing just his long kaftan. It was her father tapping loudly. He let himself in.

“How is our miracle boy today?” he said somewhat sarcastically.

She detected the unease.

“Dad, you can't just walk in here - Franco needs his rest, and a little privacy …" she stopped - he had his face on.

“This is not Francis” he said bluntly, and at the same time lit a spark in midair to ignite the packed pipe.

“It's Pietro - or Chips as you knew him - it is Francis’s father from some time ago. The real Francis departed at the bottom of the cliff three days ago."

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Dangerous to try to understand the workings of Evil

"Dost thou remember the old witch? The one with the tangle of skulls and the bevy of bones? It appears you have effected her burial in the church ground with a finger missing."

It is dangerous indeed to try to understand the workings of Evil ... nay even the character whether it be of mild or major form.

The witch Vivien was a strange one who delighted in the corruption of the innocents. One can never find reasons for the dark behaviours for in truth there is no reasonable light to explain the evils that drive their will. Suffice to say and be done with that, that evil worsens the more it is fed and the beast that it is holds no merit and no stoppage.

When Vivien was placed into the sanctified ground there had been a nob of her finger that became separated from her corpse and the little bones from her finger had fallen away into the trail of the little cart. Francis, Murmur and Tobias all missed this occurrence.

Granoldi however did perceive a good many things - he could see the fairies in the forest as well as the Demons in the trees - but around the monks with their lives of prayer he was unafraid.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

He Read Her Thinking

Her grace walked in step with the motions of the Cosmos - it was as though this woman moved in perfect time with the natural world around her. And, she saw him. When he caught the Lady’s glance, he found her to be looking right at him.

“What is yon halo?” he read her thinking to ask.

How could a mortal see anything of who he was?

She had been summoned by the keepers: two who stood protectively close by. The sound of their armour grated on his nerves. It was a little known antipathy he kept - metal on metal anguished his elven sensibilities.

“How could they tolerate their own noise?” he thought of the chatter and grind of the men of the town.

The Lady Marian laughed a gentle laugh …

“I wonder this also,” she whispered quietly to the enamoured Monk.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Worry Beard

He stroked his beard and its prickly resistance felt good across his fingers. It helped him to think, to plot his course, to ponder. Sometimes his fingers became his consciousness and his beard was the worry beads - the worry beard. If you rub your fingers along something coarse or smooth it draws the thoughts down and out of the overladen head. He needed this relief - now.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Unique Shining Spirit

“Life is spirit - not its surface view, and not even its workings - it lives, it dwells and is, Spirit. The true character of any place or person, any star or being, is not its divine design, but rather its unique and shining spirit.”

He seemed proud of coming up with that last sentence. She had to admit to herself it sounded pretty profound. She really liked this man.

“That still does not explain the bird poop and your amazing recovery” she laughed.

“It doesn’t explain anything” he said smiling and shaking his head - he thought he caught a glimpse of the great lion standing in the doorway as he said this … but kept that to himself.

“Faith is deeply personal. It's like the love affair you just want to keep secret between you and your lover, and never speak about to the world.”

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Life is neither the Surface nor the Interior

“Why did it seem perfectly natural to be showered in bird poop like that?”

Charley asked this even though she sensed that some things were never to be spoken of … yet still she felt she had to. Was she to regret it?

Francis looked at her with his black brown eyes.

“Some people say that it is better to never question a healing - let alone discuss the affliction, in case it returns” he whispered with mock solemnity. He touched her arm as he said this, and drew a line down to the elbow.

She had to wonder if he was again flirting with her.

“Are you superstitious?” she asked, caught up in a delicious moment. “Do you believe this?”

“Let me see …” he still kept his eyes fixed on hers “yes, and no. The world is not as it seems. We think that the surface view is all that anything is - but, in every single instance one finds that life is neither the surface nor the interior - and if you begin to look closely you can sense perhaps its spirit."


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Singing Frog

A small frog slipped onto the bed between them. He started to sing and had a surprisingly loud voice that woke Charley from her rest.

“I had no idea Frogs could sing so well” she said drowsily to Francis, who was wide awake and unlike her, had not slept the entire night. He had been watching the little fellow’s performance for awhile now.

Charley had decided to stay with Francis the night of the accident to take care of him, and had not left his apartment for many days since. There was nothing to be found wrong with him, but nonetheless, she had said, she wanted to be ‘sure'.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Inner Purpose

After lifetimes of effort, the soul becomes solid in their sense of inner purpose, finding their useful place … just as a planet settles into its magnetic hold, in relation to the greater dance, the soul of a man, finds itself in relation to the forces and the tensions of those around them - and purpose is derived from this.

Learning in itself is the acquiring and the becoming, thereby - yet even further to that, is the very distillation of this experience in its entirety which offers the soul its capacity to see without and within, in ways that are sophisticated - that they may know.

Knowing fundamentally is gratitude. Cosmic Gratitude.

This mystery is an exciting revelation to come to.

If a ‘teacher’ has not the light in their eyes, or the passion in their speech, or the joy in their heart for the subject they profess - it is reasonable to guess that they do not really know what it is that they are trying to relay. They may have learnt much, but do not know it as yet.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Azlan on Knowing & Purpose

The spirit thinks in snapshots amidst a continuum of life eternal: it experiences, it memorises, it forecasts, it reviews - all in bites - like scattered chapters, here and there.

It never loses the overall sense of its self, or of the greater World … it is just that the consciousness does better seeing but one part of the vista before it, at the one time.

It is often said that Life is a ‘path to learning’ - that by default, the Cosmos would set a course for everyone to graduate.

And yet, with that being said, Divinity facilitates far more than merely an obstacle course to enlightenment.

There are two gifts won by arduous enduring: purpose, and knowing.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Waking from Narcolepsy

While it had been clear to all that no amount of bandage or patented wound-heal could have saved Francis from these injuries, what had become evident was that prayer could.

Just as the rescue party arrived to see white droplets fall - splat, splat, splat - the seagulls circled in closer and were defecating onto the corpse in the sand.

The calcium white cement was falling into his open chest, and in but once, twice, thrice moments, it was as though the skin had knitted back again and the root had dissolved.

Everyone looked on amidst the feathers and the shrieking … his head, also anointed by the goloputous discharge, here and there spattered with bird poop.

And, miracle of miracles, Francesco awoke from his narcolepsy. He wiped his own eyes, smoothed his hair back from his face and sat up looking sleepy, but as before, healed and resurrected again earthly life.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Shrieking in a very high Pitch

Seagulls were circling overhead. In just over a minute many hundreds had gathered, and small white feathers were dropping down all around them, like a feathery snow.

They were shrieking in a very high pitch, and as the call got louder, more joined in the swirling white mass above.

A rock possum popped out of the dune and sat at the end of Francis’s feet.

A tall deer had been watching from afar, had courageously moved closer.

A mountain lion paced from several yards away.

Calvin still sat with Francis’s cross in his hand praying - praying literally like he never had before - at least, in this lifetime.

Years later, a world trend broke out for spontaneous prayer coming to atheists - a kind of flash religious consciousness.

Of course the scientists named it as a form of hysteria, however Puck personally attributed the phenomenon to this breakthrough at the Arizona Lake. It really only takes one happening, to get the ball rolling he would muse… Humankind trends are like that - they need a paradigmal surge before new thought can be realized en masse.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Sweet Feeling of Uttermost Silence

When Pietro-Bruce-Chan stepped back and moved away, Calvin got closer to Francis. His heart was full of pity for the tall hippy laying there.

He had a handsome face - a kindly face - a noble face. A fine gold cross had fallen into the sand, pulled from his neck when Charley had ripped his shirt away from his wound.

Calvin picked up the necklace and placed the cross into Francis’s hand. Calvin closed his eyes and all at once felt a spiritual pull, as though he was sinking into the deepest of deep waters, down into the most quiet place imaginable - and the voices and the noises of everything around him could no longer be heard.

It was a sweet feeling of uttermost silence, an inner chamber of resonant harmonies allowing him to breathe once again the ethers of perfection. He sighed, and to everyone’s surprise he began to pray audibly - he was praying for the broken and the bleeding man before them.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Door to Death

Puck was beside his daughter, standing quietly, waiting for Calvin to initiate something.

He had an intuition that this might just be the catalyst to get him back. He waited patiently - however time was getting short, as the Ambos were now on foot with the stretcher making their way down the track from the parking zone.

Pietro-Bruce-Chan kneeled beside the silent body - his own face weary with the sadness of the ages. It was as though he felt there and then every disappointment he had ever known and he was so tired by them.

He could not follow Francis wherever he had gone, the door to death was still closed shut to him - no matter how many times he had tried to push through.

Still, perhaps, just this one more time he could go again. 


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Day Knows not its Eternity

It is impossible to comprehend something that you simply cannot comprehend: such is Death. The night knows not the day, and the day knows not its eternity.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

A Memory Came Flying Back

Puck put his hand onto Calvin’s shoulder and said, “You can do this, you can do this …”

Calvin seemed entranced.

A siren’s whirring scream was getting louder in the distance.

And then, a memory came flying back to him, and Calvin knew. He knew with certainty. He forgot that he had forgotten: but then, all of a sudden, he knew.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

A Deja Vu

“I’ve never seen anything like this.”

These words drew deep impressions in Calvin’s brain … because he had - at least he felt he had - seen something exactly like this. Deja vu?- an horrific deja vu at that.

It was a pitiful sight. Francis was a big man and yet already his frame seemed to have shrunk back. His soul must have been enormous because his body by contrast looked hollow without it.

The tree-root had pierced him through his very centre, whilst his head bled also. Franco’s eyes were open, and shot with black. There was no doubt in anyone’s mind about whether or not he was ‘gone’.

Charley had torn open his shirt further to see what she could do and put her head to his chest to hear his heartbeat. Her curly hair was touched throughout with his blood. Her cheeks were streaked with mascara from crying. She looked like the world’s saddest clown.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Charley & the Chinaman

“He’s so careful, he’s so intuitive, I don’t understand how this could have happened.”

Calvin had phoned the ambulance depot and then grabbed the first-aid satchel from the kitchen, snatched the wound jar from the shelf, and a box of surgical gloves - moving as quickly as he could onto the path to the back of the compound, to the rear gate. He hoped that Charley was exaggerating and that he would find Francis laughing about a tumble with just a few scrapes along the way.

Charley and the Chinaman were right beside him running fast - Bruce-Pietro had overheard about the accident, and was becoming heartbroken all over again. He really could not bear the goodbyes with his son. He picked up his pace and ran ahead.

“Remind me, why is the cleaner coming with us?" Calvin asked Charley absentmindedly as they made their way along the sandy track watching the small figure get ahead of them in the distance - the elderly man running faster than any man should go.

They still had at least another five minutes to reach the base.

“Chinese Medicine?” she said hesitatingly.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Fall from the Ledge

Charley saw Francesco drop from the top of the great rock ledge, and although she did not realize, she had screamed out loud at the sight of it.

Her father heard this from afar: for his elvish telepathy was alerted by such alarms, and he transported himself literally within seconds to be beside her.

Together they found Francesco’s body bent, lying deranged at the base of the cliff.

“He must have dropped at least sixty feet” said Puck to Charley shaking his head.

“Have you any reception out here?" he continued - not having a phone of his own these days.

She drew her iPhone from her back pocket, shook the sand off it, and pressed the home button. The signal was not showing.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Serpent Speaks

“It is the sickness that heals” the serpent whispered slyly from the rock.

“I am sorry slippery fellow but I [Francis] do not understand this.”

“Mankind is healed by its sicknesses - it could not be said more plainly.”

Francis could hear Charley calling from afar. His phone was on silent - but she had come after him nonetheless.

The snake had wrapped itself around his ankles and was pulling at his feet.

Francis fell.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Red Rock Rattler

The visions had been returning, and Francis could find no reference to place them in. They simply did not commute into this location, or this life, and they were now beginning to get on his nerves.

Several times, when walking in the desert close to sundown, the image of a rattler had sprawled at his feet. One minute it would appear out of nowhere and then it would slide back into its shadowy place.

Francis was convinced that this snake was not of the earth because it had spoken to him also. One afternoon, when he had nearly tripped in trying to avoid the reptile, it had said: “Asclepius”; and then slithered into a crack in the red rock speckled with pig-face flowers.

The creature had said this in something of a smug voice, that bothered him even more - as if it wanted to unnerve him.

He did not tolerate aggravating influences well. In a former life he had vowed to give them up altogether. Contrary to public opinion, Francis did not embrace all animals, or men - he rather took each on their merit.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Humanity's Vision

The soul of Humanity is as one, and it is the Devil’s want to defeat it.

How odd it is, that vanity and envy go hand in hand. For as vain as he is, the Devil is a jealous creature also, and would not have Humanity strong or glorious.

When Fatima was brought into Vlad’s cemetery of the living, she witnessed the Devil’s cruelty to so many - with such despicable acts best not named, and injuries so vile that they should not be spoken of; wounds carved, flesh dismembered, life demised … When this middle-aged nun had this Hell before her, she had but one thought: namely that God did not walk the earth, or if He ever had, he had now gone.

No physical wound could have hurt this saintly soul as effectively as the panorama before her in this moment of shock. It was there and then the powers withdrew and no more healings were to come. Murmur-Fatima was defeated. And this was exactly what the Devil had in mind.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

She Forgot to Pray

The carriage had entered into an under path that ran beneath the castle. Although lit with lamps every few feet or so, it was hard to see what lay around her. Fatima’s imagination took hold. In her extreme state of fear, she forgot to pray.

He wrenched her out and down from the cabin, as though to make plain his strength over her. His treatment had fast gone from wooing to contempt, and Fatima was helpless.

She did not resist as he chained her to a cold stone wall. She could hear herself crying over the weeks to follow.

She died a death of sadness.

The dragon Vlad never became any wiser from his taunts and interrogations upon her.

When Fatima passed over into Heaven, she could see the city of ghosts he had created. Her spiritual confidence left her there and then, with the great gift of healing as well.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Mystery of Immortality

“I have heard of your healings”, he [Vlad] sneered. It appeared he was enjoying her state of bewilderment.

“This is why I have brought you”, he continued - “I need to understand the mystery of immortality and resurrection. I want these things for myself. And, I also want to know how to die …”

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

A Tsunami of Forsaken Souls

“Why have you brought me here?" she [Fatima] wailed uncontrollably.

Death had always been a friend to Fatima - she had never doubted the goodness of God in His plans. But this unnatural death she had just seen the magnitude of, was completely different.

Her sensitive nature could feel the suffering as a tsunami of forsaken souls - men, women and children, rotting, oozing, contorted, naked, defiled, and pitiable, stuck on stakes, exposed in the cold wind.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Horrific Insult to Humanity

In a field of a thousand sufferers, Vlad Dracul walked as though it were a blossom garden. It might as well have been.

It was said that he was the greatest strategist. But the truth was, this cadaver display was not for political victory, or to ward away the approaching usurpers - it had nought to do with military manoeuvres or keeping safe that part of the country he controlled.

It was all about the very worst and lowest a man could go. It was what it was, and no amount of reasoning - good or bad - could explain or qualify the horrific insult this demon was to humanity.

And so when Fatima was brought into landscape of death, her own soul was overwhelmed.

“Who are you?” she cried.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Black Arts

Suffering quickly drives the spirit up, and out, and away.

Vlad Tepes never knew this truth. He was anchored to an earthly tragedy, gaining pleasure with earthly eyes. He thought himself a scholar of these black arts, that had now in turn, tarred his soul, as he corrupted the country surrounding with such an atmosphere of agony, that would remain for centuries to come.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Vlad is Bad

He would sit and watch, playing games with himself of predictions as to who would feel the pain, and who would spasm, and who could will themselves to die.

Vladimir did not however, see the angels that hovered above and around the suffering, he could not perceive their supplements: the grace of shock, the soul’s repose, the disentanglement from a body that was torn with irreparable injury.

He could not perceive the ghosts of the children rise above their dying remains, only to play, chasing one another in the winds above.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Gruesome Vista

Through the carriage window the dark forest blacked out the sunlight, and the passage itself was naturally quite terrifying.

When the trees finally cleared, the roads opened up, and as they climbed the mountain, she could make out many poles on the horizon - now dimming with the sunset … as though the big hill was one great spike furred animal.

She could not understand what it was that she was seeing. Only when they drew closer did Fatima find that there were human bodies skewed by huge wooden stakes. And, there were hundreds, if not thousands, of these spikes that had a person attached to every one of them.

Fatima believed there and then that she had been transported into Hell - for no place on Earth could insult life with this horror.

She turned to her companion, expecting that he also was caught by the horror, and then it came.

He smiled. He looked out over the acres of torment, and smiled. He looked back at her frenzy, and smiled. Without a heart or soul, this man had nothing - but a smile.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Charismatic Magnetism

Anne Vallayer-Coster

They met in a small soup shop. She did not have the money to buy a broth, but a kindly man offered her a table and she took it.

Fatima was of the mentality of accepting offerings of charity, which broadly was thought of as ‘providence’ … and she did not interpret the gifts of a strange man in any other context, in her innocence.

The two became friends immediately. The stranger spoke with familiarity - perhaps because he knew who she was - for he had ‘eyes’ everywhere.

Fatima enjoyed his radiant attention. This soul had a charismatic magnetism the likes she had never seen.

His interest in her made her feel important. No one had shown her such kindness. And so, when Tepes suggested that she accompany him back to his castle, she had assented.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Driven from the Cloister

Remarkably, Fatima over time became chastised by her community for her deep convictions and confidence.

When she was party to a great healing, it was reckoned that she herself placed her talents to be at the station of God, and that she should not be seen to be the giver of any life. In their opinion, Fatima needed to be humbled.

One miracle, or two, was noteworthy, but to have many, became despised and doubted.

She learned to do her work in secret, but despite of this, was driven out from her cloister and country in the Winter of 1499.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Miraculous

Souls who have seen God’s work firsthand hold a living recollection within their being, that dwells within them for all times to come.

Whether consciously known, or embedded in their dream-being, this is true for all individuals who have been blessed with the visions and realizations of the miraculous.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances