People have all Kinds of Bodies

Jobe was becoming a little agitated and impatient waiting for Puck. He was standing in a dark and gloomy spot and had lost track of how long he had actually been there when finally he could hear hurried footsteps approaching from behind.

He turned and saw that this was not Puck after all, but an elderly man, who was labouring with the weight of a large pail half his own size, that he carried in both arms outstretched. It was stuffed with small bits of paper. As he moved closer Jobe could see that they were lottery tickets encircled with red ink.

Jobe had been itching badly, having broken out in scabs from all the crack he'd been doing before. Although he no longer had a body to blister, the memory of it had stayed within his finer body that he was using right now.

People have all kinds of bodies - sheaths, like Russian dolls - with layers that can be discarded one by one. The shells are shed after death and some of the bodies still retain old details in their memory.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series

The Face was Smiling

Jet had a bizarre feeling that someone was following him, and however inexplicable, it was always there in the back of his psyche.

He had first thought it could be God watching over him or perhaps a guiding Angelic presence - but when he began to hear actual footsteps these explanations paled.

When asking other people he met if they had ever felt as though they were being crept up on, and watched deceptively ... assorted big brother theories were confided to him with a solemn emphasis on conspiracy.

Recently when returning home he had closed and locked the front door behind himself, when only a few minutes later he heard it slam shut alarmingly, as though the invisible presence had actually let himself in following behind.

Then there was the uncanny time when an entire flock of birds gathered high in the sky, in perfect formation, lingering just long enough to come together and form the face of a man looking down at him - and worse still, the face was smiling.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series

First Prize

First prize and he could not find the bloody ticket!

Just then the stitch inside his chest radiated right through to the centre of his being. He clutched the side of the chair before over-balancing and falling to the floor ... his heart had just given out. When he was found the next morning by his landlady she had wondered at the mess of papers there lying on the carpet.

"Usually keeps it tidy, he does" she earnestly pronounced to the undertakers as he was being loaded into the hearse.

She felt embarrassed for him having been found like that.

************

Puck did not think that the ticket would be missed.

He had just wanted to give Marley a really nice surprise this time and did not consider that Bartholomew had kept to the same numbers for over a decade and could remember them by heart.

What took ten years of investment for Bartholomew just took ten seconds for Puck to abscond with - and he was fast, so fast that no one even saw him enter or exit the building.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series 

Three Tree Sections

His tree-house was divided into three tree sections: the underground, the ground level and a top level.

 At the top level he meditated, slept, scribed and scryed.

Ground level had the indoor salt swimming pool, ten guest bedrooms, four small barns; a dining room, servery, home- theatre, and a reading room library.

The underground comprised of one lock up cell (large enough to hold ten guests) a storeroom, clothing and costume wardrobe; troll accommodation suitable for all kinds of beings who preferred the cavernous lifestyle; and lastly, a passage to a vault of which he spoke little of.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series  

Puck's 'Tree-house'

Our physical world is one of the fewer fixed habitats in existence; however even in its microcosmic regions the latitudes are infinite.

Yet concerning Space itself one finds that the prospects are indeed limitless, and map it though we might, we can only define Space by what it is that fills it, and not by that of its own substance and size.

Puck's 'tree-house' stood over eighty foot high and was decorated with hundreds of brightly coloured flags that climbed to the very highest branch.

If you were to walk around its massive leathery base it could take a hundred steps or more to arrive back to where you first began.
Amber sap glittered and dripped in voluptuous globs; knots and knobs and insect holes, peppered its exterior.

Puck had crafted a small whistle from one of the boughs and with two shrill notes, the entrancing doorway would appear.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series

Space 1.01

Between the borders of Faerie and the physical World stands an ancient forest where the trees are exceedingly tall; and although no longer visible to men, their roots go deep into its earth.

 They came from a time when the blend of the neighbouring realms was apparent, and magic was all about - almost commonplace.

Blyton and Barrie wrote of these trees - whose wide girthed trunks became portals for 'other worldly' residence - with the proportions of a Tardis and the comforts of a luxury home inside.

The cosmic fields are brimful with such realities - for space itself is not pre-determinedly fixed or confined, but is rather concessional to both cause and reality.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series 

The Sanity of Divinity is Reason

Puck had seen firsthand how words could be turned to contaminate the truth, and what a dark magic was worked when folk were careless with what they said, putting hurtful ideas out into the ethers.

People seemed to lack deference to relevance these days.

Relevance, he thought, was key to reasonability.

The sanity of Divinity is Reason, and the passage to that reason is relevance.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series