Vivisection

Johnstone Pharma disposed of hundreds of rabbits every month. They found them to be more docile than the rats, and ideal for skin sensitivity tests for the more mundane products, whilst piglets were best used for tissue grafts, being reliably compatible to human dermatology.

Even though Johnstone Senior was himself now clothed in a spirit form, it appeared that he still lacked the eyes to see the cluster of wounded animals around his ankles.

Johnstone’s sight was upon earthly things, and although he saw George, he could not see the rabbit that George would cradle in his arms as they were speaking to one another - or the small fairies that stroked their spirit fur.

Placing a small piglet back down upon the ground, George took his little notebook out from his coat pocket and started to write out again - this practice of note-taking came from forty years on the job - and nowadays it helped him greatly to filter his thinking.

When he was working as a health inspector he also found that it also worked to keep the interviewees honest. Note-taking was powerful, he would say to himself.

Each of the rabbits had a circle of fur shaved from their rear flank with a neon pink number inked upon their bare skin.

''My boy's looking after it all now you know."

George nodded. "Yes. l met him in the hospital a few months back - he's been missing you".


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances 

Heaven as known to Creatures

[c. 21st Century ~]

George was fumbling with the latch of an enormous rabbit enclosure that was divided into thirty individual cells. Instead of using a traditional grid-wire for the front of the cages, there was clear nylon matting through which you could see the animals quite easily.

Johnstone Senior had been giving George the ‘behind the scenes’ tour, along with the usual statistical details, whilst George kept poking his finger through the mesh, in an endeavour to make contact with 'Sooty' no. 1246 - whose face was pleading with him to get her out of there as fast as he could.

At his feet sat twenty or so ghost-rabbits who had deceased from previous trials.

The etherial bunnies usually would remain in the laboratory for some weeks after their slaughter, before realising they were free to go roam the heavenly fields and chew on the sweetest of grasses.

There is not much written explaining Heaven as it is known by creatures; although some early records did map the migration of Ibis as they travelled their way out into the Cosmos after death, with countless hieroglyphic insignias depicting similar parties in the afterlife.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Granoldi the Bear

[ c. 13th Century ~ ]

The countryside at night was alive with the creatures and beings that hid from the people and the beasts of the daylight.

Noses twitched, beaks clicked, paws itched. In the moments before, Francesco would recite the Alma Putto, and the animals who gathered around his spiritual light remained quiet, even though they were so conflicted, by their very real instincts to flee or fight.

Unbeknownst why, it appeared that the smell of one another aggravated the congregation terribly, far more than the appearance of each other. Francis discovered that creatures interpret the world through their smell firstly - and so he took the leaves of the eucalypt [Bay or Linden] and laid them upon the burning charcoals of the camp fire, to help soothe their anxieties.

Amongst the group sat a large snow-white bear. Everyone knew that the white bears of fabled lands did not frequent the woods of the north. There was, however, a troop of songsters visiting the district that had acquired an albino cub when it was young it was said, and they had profited greatly from his performances. It came to pass however, that he had overtaken their height, and was manacled with cutting irons, to keep him harnessed in their employ.

Nightly there was the big reveal, where in the final act Granoldi the Great Polar Bear would lumber out through the canvas curtains, wearing his leathered suit and woollen cap.

This was always a pleasing note to leave on, and quite often the coins would be tossed into the pot, hoping to make him dance. Granoldi did not dance, yet they would collect the coins, dismantle the tent, and move on.

One day, this same bear had been found by Francis secured to a giant fir tree. The troop had left him whilst exploring the prospects of the next village.

His tender skin bled beneath the iron, making dark red patches that were staining his fur. Their unkindness to the beast was evident in this abandonment alone.

And when Francis unbolted his irons, the great bear did not run away, but stayed.

And when the songsters returned to collect him, they found that without the chains and clamps, they had no viable persuasion, and had to depart without their valued slave.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

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