Made in China

With an almost macabre sense of satisfaction Chips found himself to be human again. But with this came a new skill-set to re-learn also.

For as a dog, in his previous incarnation, he had acquired the tastes and the thinking of an animal’s ways - it went with the body, so to speak.

And equally so, so much of being a man, simply comes from the body also, and not the indwelling consciousness within. The body has its own wants and needs, and it was painfully apparent that breathing was the most necessary one right now.

Of course the box that he was confined in was not constructed to actually keep anybody prisoner - it was in fact a container to house a sterile cadaver, that was ‘donated’ just hours before for the lab-coats to run tests on.

An aged man from China, with tanned skin and brown sapphire eyes looked back at him in the reflection of the stainless lid above. With a push, and a crash Chips lifted the lid up and off.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Securing a Body

Chips awoke in laboratory one, with a nuclear headache, that had exploded on his descent back into life.

He had secured a space inside this body in rapid time, and although he was only metres from where he had left Francis and Puck, he had no idea of their whereabouts, nor they of him.

Chips blinked hard to try to clear his vision, and moments later discovered he was having difficulty breathing. A glass walled coffin encased his new body and the icy cold air surrounding him was already becoming exhausted in rapid time.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Chips is Dead

Robyn was crying in the court yard when Calvin found her, early that morning.

He did not know what to say - he did not feel very good with such things; he just stood there not wanting to back away.

“I did not know that you have been unhappy here” he said.

Her eyes were red. It seemed like she had been crying for a very long time.

“You can tell me” he whispered. “Tell me what is on your mind, I promise I will listen.”

“Chips is dead” she spluttered, and then let out a wail.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Motherly Concern

Hannah-Mary then interrupted them.

At thirty-two the woman could have been mistaken for Mirabella’s sister … they appeared so alike, with the exception of a thickened waist and generous breast of her mother, they bore exactly the same countenance.

She put her arm around her beloved daughter.

“I promise to take care of him - he will not want while you are away.”

She also was saddened, but this was because she did not want her daughter to leave.

Monastical life is no life for a young girl, she had told her. But what if this husband would take the life from her? How could she be sure that he would treat her Mirabella well? She shuddered at the thought of relations, having only one dark memory where she was forced beyond her will.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Bear Friend

“Granoldi” she said, placing her bare hand gently on his nobbled paw, “I am to marry quite soon, and with this I needs-must go far away to make my home. My husband to be, lives seventy leagues from this town, and it is without choice I must take residence there beside him.”

She stopped as her eyes began to mist over. Mirabella deeply drew breath and began very sadly:

“This means my dearest friend, my darling brother, that I shall not be able to see you tomorrow, or the next, or the next after that. And I am beside myself in this. I do not want this to be our final greeting, or goodbye.”

He could tell that her mood was serious. His eyes had filmed over with white, and blended with his fur, and this being so, he could not read her face.

Mirabella herself had tanned skin and jet black hair. Both her features and frame were fine, and her tunic was of pale blue wool. Her cape was of the same cloth, and she took it off, to put over her bear-friend’s shoulders.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

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