Puck continued: “He had all kinds of body parts ground down and extractions and fluids from babies and virile men, scholars and gymnasts, even the bones of saints - he ate it all, wanting the ‘virtue’ of their life-force as he called it.”
Now he had Calvin’s attention. Francis looked uncomfortable and stroked his beard contemplatively - this subject made him miserable.
“Well how? Where?” asked Calvin flipping open his phone to Google “Hitler Cannibal”.
“In his chocolate,” said Puck blandly, “the human extractions were in his chocolate.”
Calvin just read that the guy ate two pounds a day of the stuff. “Sheesh” he said sitting back, giving a pause for the thought.
“Of course he got absolutely nowhere with all of this, whatever he had hoped. You can’t consume virtue and make it your own like that. But what would a devil know? They get everything back to front.”
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
The girls had gone to organise lunch and the three had become sidetracked into a conversation about Hitler.
“Why does everything have to come back to Hitler?” Calvin asked himself - preferring the company of the women to the two old men in front of him.
Puck wanted his attention - and was trying to impress upon Calvin just how dangerous some human experiments can become.
“The Führer did not eat animal meat because it was his belief that he would take on the properties - the nature of that beast - were he to ingest it. But he was no vegetarian.”
“You just said that he did not eat animals?” said Calvin abruptly.
Charley’s father really bothered him at times, although he was not sure exactly why.
“No, no animals - just people. He ate people.”
If Francis was surprised at this he did not show it. Chips was sitting in between the men, and put his chin up on the table, blinking from one to another, watching on like an obvious spy.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
Hannah-Mary had long been frightened that if she pushed him [Francis] into this very moment he would estrange himself from her, or worse still, send her far away.
Yet, she could not help herself.
“Why cannot we be married?” she said most pleadingly.
“Because I am already married to another” he said unapologetically. And that was that.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
Although she was still connected by a clairvoyant mirror with her brother Murmur, she could also almost read the shining thoughts of Francis. She knew his prayers before he spoke them, she heard the music of his song, and thrilled to the core of her being, just to sit with him in silence.
Why could he not show her the tenderness he most easily gave to the goat?
This was not to say that the elven monk had romantic encounters with the beasts that gathered around him - no, he was not like the herdsmen of the north who the villagers would complain of, saying that their wild children had hairy backs and were born in paddocks, later to be but mute simpletons digging and ploughing for their fathers.
No, Francis did not engage with his animals like the fancies of the Roman courts, whose zoos were salons of iniquity - parlours of coiffured creatures wearing their golden harnesses, brushed and fragranced, feasting on the tables, soiling the marbled floors with the Egyptian servants hastening after them.
No, Francesco had no fetish or inhuman lust - he quietly and simply bore love for everyone, and everything.
- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
Hannah-Mary placed her hand gently onto Francis’s knee whilst he was deep in prayer. He kept his eyes half open, fixed down at the ground, as she held it there. Ever so slightly her fingers crawled towards his thigh, that was thinly covered only by the coarse wool of his tunic. His manhood sprang into being, and the prayers he had silently announced were swiftly truncated.
The angels looking on, were abandoned with their waiting arms now empty.
Mary found hope in this, when in fact there really was none. At nineteen she was still very simple in her perspectives about men and their core motivations.
His eyes searched for hers, wanting to reach out to her with great seriousness - knowing that this dialogue had been a long time coming.
Francis drew a breath and inched back, saying “Hannah dear, we cannot marry - and I will not take you as a concubine.”
Tears splashed down her face. It was far more than mere rejection that stung her - for she had loved Francis ever since he had delivered her from the attackers on the mountain that they now lived upon.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
“Not everything is sinister Dad.”
Packet food turning common people into trolls? Well some might have said this was already pretty obvious, she thought to herself. There was a certain comfort to be found in private sarcasm.
“You know that the Fay world is not so distinctly separated from the physical world as you might think my dear daughter. We never have been. In point of fact - the world of the deeper Fay and the material are one and the same.”
“How so? Now you are definitely not making sense.”
“What you call reality is but a very persuasive magic - and what you call ethereal, is the beginning foundation and substance of this world. And there you have it!”
“And” he said slowly and deeply, “Your company here is contriving to separate men from the natural world, and (he looked weary here) it is serious - I would say deadly serious, but this is far more serious than death itself has ever been. Please listen to me Charley while there is time.”
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
When she visited her Elven home her ordinary eyesight saw elvish things, but back on terra-infirma she could only see the material life - the physical life as everyone else saw it. And, as for the spirits of the departed, she could not see them in either existence.
He put his arm around her - Puck dared not to speak his true mind.
“Charles, I have a prediction for you.” He perceived that he had her attention and continued: “It is simply this - that your pharmaceutical company is going to try to change the way the world views its food. It is going to create pharmanutrients that are prescriptive meals that will replace fresh food.”
“But isn't that concept already out there in the market? Weight loss - infant feeding - weight-lifting proteins etc. There’s nothing new in packaged enriched ‘foods’ is there? Is there really a point of difference? Apart from excellence of course?” she laughed a little defensively at his seriousness.
“Yes, yes there is”, he said determinedly. “For one thing they can turn ordinary men and women into trolls.”
“I wish you wouldn't say things like that Dad - someone might hear you.”
Now Charley was genuinely irritated - and added: “you always have to exaggerate.”
“I do not” he said emphatically - “not this time anyhow”.
-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances
