Pondering

“Thus it was called pondering."

He stopped writing, and looked at this last sentence in a satisfied way.

In his spare time Puck had been penning a manuscript - a sort of self-help novella that he visualised as being the year’s number one bestseller.

There was of course an Amazonian raft of advice-type books and a sea of subjective philosophy upon which that raft bobbed and bounced upon.

However Puck himself enjoyed his own thought - so much so, he felt obliged to share it.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

At Stalemate

Francesco had pledged a life of poverty, yet at every turn his celebrity had attracted gratuities that he would quickly give away.

He noted, his entire life had brought him material blessings which upon denying would return again and again threefold. There was a magic to this that even he did not understand.

However, he keenly felt the incongruity of poverty about him.

Compelled by an electric empathy, his spiritual nerves could not withstand the suffering or need of another.

The Pope, on the other hand, did not perceive this and unwittingly took the actions of Francis to be an ungrateful proverbial slap in the face to Rome.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Candied Roses

"I offer you bitter orange peel and candied roses, and you refuse it. Do you wish to further insult my generosity?

“Publicly, privately you continue to be seen to be more holier than me? I will not, will not, abide this humiliation."

“I do not thinketh my wretched self to be holier than thou, oh most beloved - and I swear this that was not my intent.”

“Then why do you continuously aggravate my charity thusly?” the Pope had piped, finishing with a squeak from the lungs, dabbing his weeping eyes with an embroidered handkerchief.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Bruce Lee

The young vet [Robyn] had been offered the employment of a lifetime, being given the role of co-ordinator of Research materials, and had already fluffed it.

It still did not explain the naked Asian man who was clearly alive, and now standing before her.

Francis, who had not been far behind Puck, entered the room, caught sight of ‘Bruce Lee’ and advanced toward him with the warmth of ten suns. The two embraced. It was an unusual, but touching sight.

Calvin, who had just come in from the courtyard had followed Francis into the lab and was surprised to see the men as they were.

“The dog died” Puck said explainingly.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Cadaver Orders

“I thought we had canceled the cadaver orders” Puck said disapprovingly as he had entered the cold room briskly. He held a raging contempt for such practices and it was the first instruction he had actually given after taking over the pharmaceutical complex.

“Back order” said Robyn sheepishly.

She was embarrassed.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

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