The Thirteenth Century

The thirteenth century, from the ordinary man's perspective was (in both the east and the west of the world) a time when people did not question the extraordinary. And when it came to talents and events that were most unusual, they simply accepted them.

For example: the majority of commonfolk could not draw or write more than their name. Then there were the few who painted their visions and portraits so vividly and realistically that they embodied life - and their skills were so far beyond the ordinary reach, yet they were accepted.

Engineers and composers, whose talents advanced, proving themselves, in fanciful cathedrals, in allegros and concertos - these too were taken to be marvels - and yet accepted.

The saintly and the magician, and yes, the very magic of the Fey, were similarly, and likewise, unquestioned.

If things were simply taken for what they were - what they were seen to be, then they were what they were. The people did not question what they saw.

It was only much later as the centuries progressed that doubt and questions scorned the Holy, the inspired, and the magician's works.

Curiously this happened at exactly the same time that the other Arts simplified - paintings became abstract, buildings, functional, and tunes grew repeated choruses.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS, Second Chances

High Spirits

[ c. 13th Century ~ ]

The moon splashed its light onto the stepping stones before him - a shining path that sat barely above the river's lick. To those watching from afar it appeared that Francis was walking upon the top of the water, as he balanced nimbly upon each polished pebble.

Behind him followed Murmur, who had left Hannah-Mary with her child safely in the care of a community east to where they were camped. The women there spoke the language of babies, and taught the motherly craft. They had welcomed them both with open arms.

Tonight, he and Francis performed the Midnight Mass, and with the night air being comfortably warm, and their purpose strong, the two were in high spirits.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

An Entity of Darkness

“Pull a rabbit out of a hat my boy, pull a rabbit out of a hat!”

That's precisely what was needed right now for sure. These words he reheard in his mind, just as though his father was saying them.

On his very first experiment, where he had to light the burner beneath the shining beaker, his father had said this with gusto. But where now are the rabbits?

Ever since that day Johnstone Senior had imparted to him the confidence to try for things that he never thought possible. At an early age Calvin had the ability to believe that he really could pull a rabbit out of a hat - that he could manifest the extraordinary. Having also the confidence of a multi-millionaire's son didn't hurt either. His sense of expectation was always strong.
And, from a complicated industry he had been shown the extravagance of Nature's own designs.

He had mixed and mingled fluids and vapours, cells and their nano's - to find that bacteria had personality; and that life could spring up as though out from nowhere. Spontaneous generation was a reality, even if the doors to the other-world that they came from were invisible.

However all of this magic had turned upon them now; in ways they could never have foreseen or invited.

The ‘rabbit’ became an entity of darkness, and Calvin felt it quiver in the empty sack of his stomach.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Lion's Head Ring

[c. 21st Century ~]

Calvin didn't pay much attention to the stranger who brushed by him on the bus. It was unusual to see a man in a kaftan, but the area was in no short supply of hippies, especially the kind who lived in the communes shouldering the native land close by in the desert.

What he did register momentarily was the bronze ring that this tall man wore ... it had a lion's head that resembled a miniature door-knocker. Calvin made a note to himself to trawl the markets when all of this was over, to find one for himself.

Looking briefly for a seat, he half noticed some alarmed faces staring at him. This had happened before. It was because of of the green stain still visible on his right hand. People most likely thought he was a bank robber with a dye stain like he had, yet he had not given them, or it, a second thought …

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

A Blessing & a Curse

The body that the spirit inhabits becomes its companion of sorts, a companion that remains linked in a kinship, even after a death, after the body itself has dissolved. For it too has a nature, and an indwelling character of sorts, that has collected experience and memory, and a binding and renewing karma in the service of the two.

And so, when it happened that Murmur had reawakened Pietro from his death, he had given him a chance to have days in the world he would not have had ordinarily.

But this was to be living in another form other than his own. For the body Pietro had worn had now deceased and dissipated.

There is an expression to say that some things can be both a 'blessing and a curse’. The innocent Monk was unaware of the deep and potent magic he had been performing with his resurrections.

With this embodiment came a sorry consequence: that now the door to the Heavens had closed for those he had saved - and Pietro could not find his way back, as he might have done with an ordinary departure into death.

His chance to exit the starry path had come and gone, and its exact configuration was unknown to him, and he subsequently became earth-bound thereafter.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Life is not what it appears to be

When a soul is dislocated from its original habitat - from the body that housed it and gave it warmth in the world - when it is displaced and placed into yet another form, another body, another mortal flesh - it becomes confused as to where it should be, and has difficulty finding the pathways back into the heavens that it would usually return to periodically.

The science of the spirit and its relationship to the body in which it indwells, is a complex conundrum.

Life is not what it appears to be. Life is wholesome, and this unison of synergistic amalgamations persuade the common view that one thing is the other.

But one thing is many things - at the one time - and this simple truth goes to the essence of all life with its manifold complexities.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Welcome to this World

Looking sternly at her tear stained countenance, he asked "What name would you have christened this child?"

"Mirabella" she said, staring at the ground.

The young monk made the sign of the cross upon the little brow and softly whispered in her frilly ear.

"Mirabella" he said, "welcome to this world”.

And with that so said from the healer monk, the tiny girl blinked her shining eyes, and turned a pearly pink all over, as new blood had now fortified her inspirited body.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances