Bearly there

After Francesco’s passing Mirabella, now sixteen years of age, was visiting the Friar’s sanctuary to take presents to the elderly bear, who to everyone’s surprise was still walking the earth.

He had been feeble from the start, and because of his white hair and the crippling chains, his arthritis had caused him to be sore in the joints, and displaced unevenly throughout - everyone had assumed him to be aged many years before, when he had first arrived.

Even still, he must have now surpassed twenty they conjectured. Granoldi loved Mirabella before all others and the two shared memories of an earlier life of sunlit forests and carefree days. They sat in an un-awkward silence that was resplendent with this happy time of the past and the present, converging in each other’s company.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Spit & Vanish

The grey Weimaraner shuddered, his head fell to one side, and his tongue drooped out from his mouth. He was gone.

Puck put the lid onto the beaker with haste, and a fine blue mist seemed to be floating within the vessel.

“I don’t feel good about this” Francesco said flatly. He had been dreading this moment - and had carried the guilt of his father’s predicament for a very long time all told. He continued:

“How sure are you about what you have done?” He looked at the beaker … the blue light had dissipated and there was nothing much to be seen in there at all.

He took it out of Puck’s hands and gazed into it woefully.

“There’s nothing in here, is there?” he said, now stating the obvious.

“Nup, guess it didn’t work after all.” said Puck in agreement.

“Our one chance, and you lost him”, Francis said complainingly.

Puck put his hand on his shoulder. “Yep” he said awkwardly.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Over the Hills & Far Away

"Quick, hand me that jar."

Francis looked up at Puck, and then to his side where he was pointing. There was a glass beaker with a chrome lid on a bottom shelf, near where he was holding Chips in his arms.

He reached over and took it and threw it up into Puck’s hands. Puck caught it, rapidly unwound its lid, and then spat a little spittle into it. He then placed a hand onto Anon, whose eyes were too heavy now to open, and he whispered in the old dog’s ear.

“We’ve got you buddy. We’ll figure this out, I promise you, this time, we will figure it out. Just go into the jar and we can transport you over the hills and far away.”

Francis eyed Puck with concern. He loved Anon and distrusted this idea. Especially upon hearing ‘over the hills and far away’ - what was that? Puck had not been himself of late. He said nothing.

“It's a fine expression” the Pookah said, reading his thoughts with a little indignation.

“It sounds a bit loopy”, said Francesco, momentarily distracted.

“It's appropriate” said Puck - “where else is one to go?”

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Spirit is Swift

Usually, when a mortal departs his fleshly frame, he ascends up through the gates of death, and out into the cosmic spray. There, his etherial starry body takes the soul into the realms where he is best suited - up and away from the concerns of the earthly world and its impulses.

The spirit is swift, and knows the heavens intimately. For this is the natural home to all men's souls, and more natural than the life previously known.

Now this time became very much as it was before - all Pietro could contemplate, was that of finding his son who had run away, now so many years ago.

His spirit flew over the paddocks, and past the fruit fields, through to the mountains where the camp of Francis had grown to a castle community.

In a stone wall there, was a fountain trickling within, and beside, on a pedestal, was a bronze head that looked just like his beloved boy. He knew he had come to the right place.

Pietro’s spirit dashed through the vast corridors, searching within, sailed its way past the cells and vestibules, frantically seeking his son.

Pietro-Peter stopped back at the bronze, looking longingly at the face - to then notice an inscription beneath the piece that read:

Francesco di Pietro di Bernardone
~ 1181 - 1226.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Uncanny Phenomenon

When Peter had been brought to the community by Murmur after his first turn-about from death into his newly forged body, he had lived contentedly until his next death … following the routine of a simple life, and blending with the brothers quite happily until his body simply had tired and died.

His funeral was held in the town in the Abbey grounds, where he was to be interred. Murmur was far away on the other side of the country at this time living in the Franciscan community … whilst Pietro-Peter was being sung his final song.

It was an uncanny phenomenon, for his soul to have taken the form of another as he did. And during this second chance at life, Peter-Pietro had quite forgotten much of what he had done in the years earlier. Yet when he was released yet again, his spirit remembered the will and wishes it had carried before - and the great desire to find his son, as he had had, when he had died by arrow the first time in the forest.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Earthbound

There had been twenty-two transformations Pietro had undergone before becoming the dog known as Anon- twenty-two body-hopping slides into a life that would not let him go home into the other-words - the heavenly afterlife, after each time that he died..

When his soul yearned for the stars, all he had got was the cold hard reality of more hunger, more pain and more restriction, within a ceaseless cycle of immediate incarnation - conspiring to keep him earthbound seemingly ever more.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Find a new Body

He hastened down the corridors to the hatchery, finding Francis on his knees in morning prayer.

Not wanting to disturb him Puck backed his way out of the door, but then heard his friend calling as he did this.

“Pook get in here - I need you now”. Pook was short for ‘Pookah’ a nickname of Francis’s from long ago. Their familiarity was something reserved for in private. But the two went back almost a century and they had evened out to equals long ago.

Puck heard the urgency and went immediately to Francis’s side to see him on the floor bending over the dog whose head rested limply placed across his knees.

Chips had been whining of late of being weary, and the two had just thought it was his usual complaining which seemed to be a large part of the Weimaraner’s temperament.

It was plain to see that the poor beast was labouring with his breathing. His eyes looked frightened beneath it all. Puck knew exactly what this meant.

“Well, it's lucky you have me here this time” he said with a mock confidence.

The truth was Puck had no idea how this would go, yet had promised Francis he would help if he could, the next time Pietro had to find a new body. Looks like now was this time.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances