Daffodils would spring up

Daffodils would spring up wherever his feet touched the ground. It was just one of his many tricks in the common world for the fay - for when developed, they can inspire life wherever they go.

Depending on which season, the bulbs might sleep and wait until Spring, to push their way up through the dirt, to answer their calling sun - but nonetheless these floral tracks and trails would begin at the footfall of this ageing elf.

Words, like flowers, would spill out from the mouths of mortals around him involuntarily - their trails wound pathways back to their heart-forged thoughts - fast flying and skimming the ethers - like fireflies in winding lines, illuminated by their passions of any given moment.

Puck always knew their thoughts, and their intentions, before they were forged into words. He knew it all, for you see human beings really aren’t all that complicated or profound … they can be confusingly random, but were never really a match for his own wit and knowledge.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Early Morning

Darkness was all around as it was still the early morning and not yet lit.

He couldn’t see where the words were coming from, yet the voice sounded cordial enough.

“What would you have Francesco, if you could have anything?” was asked, deeply, with consideration. It seemed to be coming from the lion above from where he sat.

Perhaps this was an invitation to pray out loud, Francis bethought. I will oblige -

“Here then”, he began -

“Merciful benefactor,
Lord of Lords,
Creation’s gate
Today I pray
I pray this day
this day of days
this prayer of prayers:
for Wisdom’s light: to bespoke our minds
for Grace’s charity: to provoke our cares
for Heaven’s bounty: to sustain our souls
for Godly Reason: to make calm our selves."

He stopped here, for there was a great cracking noise above and Francis moved quickly, instinctively rising to his feet, in case any of the stone were to fall.

It was the lion - the great stone lion from up above — whose hardened shell had taken on a living form, and with a heavy thud, sprang all the way down, and there stood right before him, staring at Francis in the half-light of the new morning.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Metropolis of Antiquity

Francis felt himself to be a very long way from home.

At the first he had borne the delight of a tourist - wide-eyed to the fascinating aspects of this metropolis of antiquity and faith. 

But then the ghosts had crowded in on him - whispering their complaints with rasping wraith-words … a breathless petitioning for his interest, forlorn in the injustices that had taken them and their loved ones into their sodden graves.

How did a city as beautiful as this, house so much sorrow?

He was conflicted more so.

The aged Pope had required his reporting, asking for this audience now due the very next day; but he had not the heart to fulfil this meeting. In fact, he had so much heart the anomalies of Rome were eroding his confidence entirely.

He stopped to rest at the foot of one of those lions, sitting at the ground beneath, he opened a roll of wool that he carried with him, and wrapped it around his shoulders to the ground. Closing his eyes he started to pray.

“Be careful my boy, lest your prayers disturb the pious” he heard a voice say. It had come from above him.

“I know not what you mean” he answered back.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Monuments

There were Roman lions cast in bronze, carved in sandstone, and sculpted in marble, almost everywhere all over the great city.

There were so many, one could say, that it was almost expected, when passing by a fountain or an public place, to find one or two of the giant cats lying stretched across a pillar or a gate.

When Francis had been summoned into the Holy City he had been transfixed by the lavish empire of artists, with their great works around the colonnades and vestibules, in houses large and small - detailed paintings and engravings, mosaics and marvellous effigies. It was apparent to him that the entire populace was touched by this beauty.

The faces of the folk dwelling in the city were markedly different, he had observed also. Perhaps it was that the wear of poverty, or the shadows of ale, did not afflict the countenance there.

No farmer or miner could be found in these streets. The merchants, and the soldiers who ventured the roads, appeared refined and well kept. Everywhere there were cassocks and shrouds, and an uncommonly vast number of Muslims who were taking quarters at the outskirts on a pilgrimage all of their own.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Big Sack

This Troll sported the smile of an imbecile, and stood far too close for her liking. His head was too large and his spiky hair unkempt and greasy. Charley could smell it from where he stood. She was not familiar with his kind, and because he was not dressed in traditional fay costume, she took him to be nothing more than an unfortunate vagrant.

She rummaged through her handbag as though to find some change to give him - it also gave her the excuse to look away. She hid her expression with her the curls falling down - for some reason this odd fellow really bothered her. Charley admonished herself for these unkind thoughts.

He had interrupted her contemplations. She had come to this park to find some time for herself, and to be able to finally be alone with her memories.

“Typical” she thought, “just typical that someone would turn up and interrupt my peaceful moment like this”.

Upon looking up she saw he was holding a large dirty sack. She could smell something farm-like coming from him, or it, or both. She tried to smile, holding out a five pound note.

“Are you from around here?” she asked in the friendliest voice she could muster.

He did not say anything but pointed to a gardener’s shed not far. She relaxed. Oh perhaps that's all he was, some untidy groundsman out cleaning up.

“That’s a rather big sack” she said cordially - edging up the bench to get a few inches away. She then moved to get up.

“Big enough” he grunted.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Troll

Charley was sequestered out to each city’s head office, and it was this that had brought her back to the UK, returning to the story of her own beginning.

She watched the mists skip around the trees below, the random flash from the lighting of a cigarette; a trundle noise of the caretaker's trolley; the intermittent jogger winding their way to the lake for their final mile; the park was a'buzz and a'hum with the new day’s activity.

The more absorbed she became in staring out at the wildlife around, she drifted far from her own melancholy, from this vacuous feeling that nothing really made sense any more.

It was there and then that the troll appeared.

He came as though from out of nowhere, staring at her expectantly. He stood fairly tall for his kind, five foot eight or so; and was extremely wide, with his belt straining around his mid-drift, in the fashion of Tweedle-dee.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Neutering the Beloved Plants

Walther Roggenkamp

The companies responsible for neutering the beloved plants offended the etheric world and its occupants terribly.

To the beings that so closely attended these crops and their offspring, the genetically modified seeds were of the worst sorcery imaginable - for both the world of the Fay, and the etheric vitality of the plant kingdom, had but one driving and determining force: Life itself.

A plant that could not naturally re-seed itself was a veritable zombie, missing its soul, its future, and its connection into the World from the outset.

And, for those plants so injured, the fairy folk who would usually stay close, instead up and moved to but another field, another source … finding no attraction with the first now depleted patch.

A plant that could not naturally re-seed itself was a veritable zombie, missing its soul, its future, and its connection into the World from the outset.

And, for those plants so injured, the fairy folk who would usually stay close, instead up and moved to but another field, another source … finding no attraction with the first now depleted patch.

Very soon these same crops could not sustain the humans that ate of them - because their true vitality of life-force was bereft also. And just as the starved starch was parched and stripped of any goodness, the one-time crops became a food in name only.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances