The spiritual planes are many, and with shifting vistas, that are not so easy a reality for the human mind to take in and keep - for men are made of a solid state matrix which prefers to be in one place at the one time, and they are not partial to the parallel realities.
Puck spoke of the age when zebras were all black; when children could see their Angels; when folk spoke the truth.
He told of an era of peace when the Earth herself was relaxed - when birds' feathers were luminescent and could light up the night sky in flight.
He talked of the time when Nature was responsive to thought, and you could walk to the water's edge and it would curl back its waves just for the asking. Of ages when there were unicorn races; and trade between kingdoms; when gnomes had twilight fairs, where fresh bread was nicer than cake.
Of times when the Wind actually talked - in the hollows of rocks and caves it could chatter and call, speak poetry and prophesize, and its songs would travel far over the mountains and teach the wild children of the north.
An age of oracles and far seeing vision - of artistry and intimacy - before the disease of disbelief had succoured the modernist minds.
His stories were all true - of spheres and planes and aeons lost - tales he kept safe within his own living memory, his testimony of what once was, now gone.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
He had not spoken of his burdens to Marley for her spirit needed some comfort rather than distraction, and his graphic account of worldly calamity was too much for him in the present, let alone her.
Instead he told great stories of former times - when fruits would explode on the bough of giant trees and shower their seeds like fireworks; when humans could fly with the ease of their spirits, and horses wore silver shoes.
When someone from Faerie ever tells you something, you can see it - you can feel it - you believe it. For the true value of enchantment and its glamour, is in the imparting of a truth - by truth's own persuasion it makes itself real.
The strength of any magic lies within its fundamental realities, not within an empty falsehood as might be most commonly thought.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
When Puck told a story it was always a good one.
When he described a scene it was as if you were actually there.
Puck could project what it was he saw in his mind's eye right before you, and with a holy-o-graphic imagination the vision would shimmer and transform itself into a living history, as though plucked from the Akashic archives, born into the moment's reality.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
His eyes were smiling and he seemed to look right back at her as though she should recognize him - and for no reason known to her, she immediately felt at ease with this stranger.
Whether it was the faerie dust, or Puck's own charisma, or possibly the fact that he had genuinely loved her with long time affection -whatever the attraction- she pulled the chain from across the door and let him in.
In the morning she would remember nothing of his coming at all - the only thing she knew was that the day after felt incredibly cheerful and full of light.
Puck had broken several of his own rules, and a few of the Fey laws besides. Getting to know Marley like that, he told himself, was good for them both, or so he had hoped.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
He recollected the moments leading up to this sharp loss - the plain before him glittered magnificently with metal as far as he could see - with thousands of armoury that glanced and crashed all around him. Smoke and blood clogged the nostrils, madness seized the collective mind, and with thoughts no longer, this body of men were committing themselves into an empty and frenzied end.
Within the grace of the moment, time appeared to slow, and Red saw an arm raised above him - he waited tediously to feel the slice.
He had been distracted in a second by a curious image inscribed on the skin of that arm ... of a snake that bore a head at both ends, curled round with one head devouring the other.
The arm descended heavily and with that strike the helmet flipped back to reveal his attacker...
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
It is often thought that spirits in the after-world do not breathe as we might do - and that in being dead, one does not require inhaling and exhaling anything.
Well, they do exchange ethers, and the body of a soul does in fact breathe, and talk, and sing – though not with oxygen, but a rarefied vitality. And just as a newborn, the very first impulse that comes when one crosses over to the other side passed the veils of death, is to inhale deeply - and then relax.
But Red had been so shocked by his own death, and fast escape from the bloody mess, he simply forgot to take in the airs of Heaven, as they were.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
Ghosts embedded the walls and halls of Brunswick House. Puck spent his days and nights in their company listening to their stories; which he endured with a kindly respect for the geriatric householders there who recanted them generously.
Apart from taking temporary residence Puck's main aim was fact-finding. He knew there was much to learn that could possibly assist him with Marsden - for during that brief meeting with Phillip he had recognised him as one of the blue bloods from the Brunswick association, and therefore implicated in their history. Background information could well be the key to this man's motivation and karma today.
There was one 'spook' that had serious intel to offer - Reginald – who, in early Roman times was born Reginus, but preferred to be called after a little known divinity today, entitled Rediculus (who suffered a very bad scorn, that perpetuated a joke for a century or so after). Puck preferred to call him Red for short. Red remembered all of it; every detail had imbibed itself throughout his spirit body.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, Puck in Hell, Azlander Series
