The Experience of Beauty

 

They say that the experience of beauty, and that of feeling loved, and in love, is one of the same: and that the gods have made it thus.

From the wild to the woodland, Nature herself is both - beauteous and loveable - and both its grandeur and serenity lie embedded in the soul of this truth.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Mind-blurring Effect

“Wot’s with the noise?” came a voice not far from her.

She had thought she was left there alone, but now realized there had been someone, or more, nearby her all along.

Charley had not a chance to catch sight of her captor, but if she had, she might have been a little scared by his size and demeanour.

Trolls are unappealingly brutish in nature and form - they perspire onions, and from their noses leaks green snot.

And yet, their ancient torsos still house a beating heart within, which one day shall appeal their lot, and refine to the ways to compassion and love. This troll however, had a long way to go.

Rombardo was a merchant of sorts. His thinking was plain.

Charley sneezed. “There must be pollens in here” she thought to herself ordinarily.

And with that her sense of calmness returned. Yes! the sneeze had cleared her head. All she needed to do was think of the very next thing to bubble, she said to herself. To bubble? No, that can’t be quite right. Fumble.

No, not fumble. What was it she was trying to think of?

Rombardo had sprayed her through the weave of the bag, with an opiate that he carried, which in itself was no more than a breath freshener to his breed, yet had the overwhelming, pacifying, mind-blurring effect on humans. He used it constantly.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Long Memories

Marc Potts 

Trolls, like most of the Fay, have very long memories, and do not forget or adapt, or change their minds very easily.

The brief had been to kidnap Marley - Charlotte’s mother - some decades before - from that place in the park, on that very seat, where Charley had been sitting.

A few decades in worldly time, feels like yesterday to the enchanted beings, and the woman’s names and features were so very similar.

She had been sorting through her thoughts, trying to get close to the mother she never knew, when he had come across her. Now she found herself surrounded by hessian, literally captive in a sack with a knot tied on top, in the dark in the gardener’s shed with the overwhelming dusts of grass and fertilizer.

Charley literally had no idea of what to expect next.

She felt the top of her head for a small cut that was sticky with blood and to her disgust something crawled over her hand from a fold in the sack and down onto her neck. It had many legs.

She let out a scream.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Psychic Connection Dropped

A moment later his own phone lit up - it was Black. 

"Ah er, let me look it up ... I think it was the Hotel Babylon ... or is that a TV show? No, no it was the Trafalgar - I thought I would check with you before calling them. So you aren't with her yourself?” he said, realizing at the same time the stupidity of his words.

There was a difficult silence. Calvin kept the conversation going.

“Where are you positioned right now? Are you far from London yourself?”

“Enchanted forest”, was the gruff reply, which Calvin took to be sarcasm.

“Give me an hour and I will phone you back .... I feel sure she will be in touch really soon, nothing to worry about.”

Puck was not so sure.

He and Charley never lost touch with one another. It was as though their psychic connection had dropped out - and this could only mean one of two things, or both.

His memories of yesterday swept over him. Puck had to remind himself that this was not that time, and that Charley was not her mother ... and surely things would be different this time…


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

A Conundrum

In point of fact Calvin did not project well - his mind was neatly balanced in the present, and he rarely indulged in imaginations of any kind, to relieve him from the mundane.

The only time he left his ‘here and now’, was to contemplate some scientific possibility ... and even then he was rooted firmly in what he knew.

When the call came to say that Charley was missing, he had been working on the seventh aspect of his tissue repair - its shelf life.

People underestimate this conundrum. Often the longer any material is kept its components break down, and whatever the matter is, it will change. If you change its aspects, its very life will devolve.

Corruption, contamination and corrosion - the three 'C's Calvin wryly wrestled in production, and there wasn’t a chemist in the world who could beat them.

An anxious Robyn kept repeating words to the effect that she simply did not know. Calvin thought she was on some kind of loop with this thinking. 

“Well, how long ago was it that you last spoke with her?" he said, staring at his phone.

"It's only been a day, but that's not the point - she missed a meeting at the London office yesterday afternoon" she sighed impatiently.

“We talked in the morning and she was intending on going then.” She waited for him to say something, but he did not.

“Have you phoned her father?” he asked reluctantly.

“Perhaps he has heard from her, or better still is with her?”

“No, that was going to be my next question ... do you know how to contact him?”

“Sure - I’ll message it to you now. No, wait - I will phone him myself. Is there anything else? Give me five, and I will get back to you.”

For some reason his creeping anxiety had taken hold. He did not want to phone Mr Black, but it was the only thing he could do, and chances were Charley was with him anyway.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Resurrected Forms

Murmur slapped Peter on the shoulder, proud of himself for this most perfect resurrection. Well, near perfect, it was. His faith had been steadfast, when he had found the abandoned corpse laid out beneath its shroud of shrubbery - and exhumed it from the thorny bracken, sensing the lively pulse of the soul still strong, holding on by an astral thread, as it were.

Pietro had died all too quickly, unfulfilled and alone.

His longing to find his boy had persisted. And when Murmur petitioned the Heavens on his behalf, Pietro’s soul leapt at the opportunity to regain its way back into this world. And he did.

Only this time his muscle and bone was reconstructed - made up from the decayed remains from which he had lain in, in the pit, with all that emulsified around him.

Already, unbeknown to him, he was partly beast, and tree, as well as human. His body had drawn the living memory for its form, but its substance had come from the grave itself.

Murmur, the young and hopeful Monk, had no idea of the forces he was accommodating - his faith was pure and his intention was good, but he was naive believing that within this world was the "be all and end all’ of existence. And, to knit life out of death, would have unnatural consequences.

Resurrection takes on many forms - and that need not mean reform by mere repetition. Nor, that it is, of itself, a blessing.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Melancholy & Sufferance

“Francis continued: “My Father, we must find a way once and for all to get you back into the human form. And I, well I, needs find myself also. I am not Man, I am not Fay, I am not Saint.”

He continued: “In this country, in this time, I am called folksy, or rustic - but the charm of it is wearing thin. I feel it too, the need to leave - but our purpose has not been fulfilled, it has … staggered.”

“Son” the dog sombrely said in thought, “I could die again any day - this dog body is aged, and what of it? I will be born back into a litter of mutts and what, if in the name of God you cannot find me this time? Or, worse still, I am destined to become a cow? or a fish? or a cloud?” He sounded beyond despair.

“Let me bathe you. The air out here is drying. It is this heat and the itch that talks through you.”

The old dog put his heavy head onto his paws and closed his eyes - he mentally shut Francis out as well, diving deeply into his dog-consciousness of melancholy and sufferance.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances