The Language of the Heart

With no books to recite from, he [Francis] had by accident found that this beastly gathering preferred their stories and songs to come directly out from his imagination, whereas repetitive verse and second-hand thought had no meaning for them.

Creatures understood the language of the heart; fresh from the spiritual worlds, he conveyed the higher emotion, which in turn awoke their higher instincts ... for it was not so much the words he spoke (for which they could not understand) but rather the meaning living within, that he could impart to them.

Franco had tried to recite the common prayer, but even this had lost their attention completely.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Woodish Folk

A nest of hedgehog and assorted hares; woolly wild goats, an aged domestic brown cow. There were fourteen fox, five wolves and ten tall deer; three tree snakes, two brown, one green, and a weathered horse who had retired from the army.

A cluster of rats to the left, field mice to the right - impossible to count because they kept changing places with one another. Two scraggy sheep beside an old cracked turtle, and an assortment of scrawny wild dogs.

Francis's face was lit with the love of it all - his handsomeness over-ceded by his affection for their souls.

He seemed to be stronger and healthier during these months as Hannah had got to know him more and more. Francis was most at home in the company of the woodish folk and cherished their presence at this special resting-day Mass.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

He had a way with Words

Mary's girth had exaggerated with the swelling from an infant pushing tightly from the inside. She sat with her back against her favourite tree, listening to Francesco chant the morning's prayer.

Around the two was a great group who had seemingly appeared from out of nowhere. In the absence of human parishioners, there came the creatures.

He had a way with words, she thought scanning the crowd, who were sitting surprisingly still and appearing quite penitent.

There was a strangely uncommon communal peace there within that glade.

Some of the animals had come from the surrounding farms, pushing through the fences to join them, still in tether.

The small lambs twitched with an excited quiver. It was a big turnout for this Sabbath.

At the very front sat the smaller creatures: spotted bullfrogs with oily hides, butterflies and drowsy bats, puffed up sparrows, chatting wrens and black backed squirrels.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Papal Lace

[ Circa 13th Century ]

The ivory lace dripped from his arm and over his wrist; with the black satin folds of his weighted cassock, concealing well the withering frame beneath.

The candle was almost down to the nub and his tired mind, in likeness, was fast exhausting of thoughts - having so many papers, warrants and bulls yet to be sealed.

A succession of yawning deliberations - of moral chasms, of blind ponies, of barbed Christs, in an endless stream of holy determining.

There was a taut rap at the door - 4.00 am: the time for early Lauds ... Charley boy (known formerly as Father Paul) had arrived to dress the frail and failing Pope.

Two blanched feet idled from slipper into soft mule sleeve, and three layers of tunic and gown now encased him. The weight of the cross had become intolerably heavy to bear - its cold metal chain bit his pale wrinkled neck, shining in contrast against the anaemia of age.

The temperature in those halls was always so cold that any drowsiness one had, fast evacuated.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Johnstone Industries

Johnstone Industries had a gloves on approach, packaging mysterious substances that were so far removed from their natural beginnings that they had become almost other-worldly.

Calvin genuinely suspected that the company itself had supernatural leanings - for how far can you go … extracting life from a substance before it becomes just an animated corpse?

He liked to think of preservatives as anti-matter, an invention of the dark gods ... but he kept these suppositions to himself.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Happy Wacky

Privately the old man was very fond of dogs, having come to know quite a few during his days of vivisection (vivisection: from the Latin 'vivus' meaning alive, and 'sectio' meaning cutting). No one actually used that word anymore since the lobbyists had it censored from the industry, leaving replacement phrases of ‘analytical experimentation’ and ‘investigative live screening’ - to mask just about anything and everything involving the torturous trials the animals were put through.

Calvin glanced over to his watery-eyed friend and said blandly, "his name is ... er ...Chips - and he is staying with me."

Before any objection could be made Chips lumbered down and then sprinted through to the entrance of the compound with the three following quickly behind.

Recently the massive building had been effaced and replaced with a much friendlier Chemical Company do-over.

Futuristic styles had become passé - outdated - and they had been advised to ‘change with the times’, finding that businesses everywhere were now preferring the mom and pa, happy-wacky, pretty-pretty, slightly tacky imagery to promote their earth-friendly bleaches, deodorisers, vaccines, tissue-culture baths, tissue fixatives and boutique preservatives.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Wind-chime of Miniature Skulls

Now quite aged and frail, with only a meagre frame and failing eyes, she cursed them twice, packed up her tool kit, and left for the refuge of the dank and the dark, where she lived comfortably concealed from her trolls.

It had proved too troublesome to pursue her, and so Vivien was left to live her following days in chosen solitude.

A feint green mist glowed around her timber home, and a wind-chime of miniature skulls tankled in the sullen breeze.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances