He Read Her Thinking

Her grace walked in step with the motions of the Cosmos - it was as though this woman moved in perfect time with the natural world around her. And, she saw him. When he caught the Lady’s glance, he found her to be looking right at him.

“What is yon halo?” he read her thinking to ask.

How could a mortal see anything of who he was?

She had been summoned by the keepers: two who stood protectively close by. The sound of their armour grated on his nerves. It was a little known antipathy he kept - metal on metal anguished his elven sensibilities.

“How could they tolerate their own noise?” he thought of the chatter and grind of the men of the town.

The Lady Marian laughed a gentle laugh …

“I wonder this also,” she whispered quietly to the enamoured Monk.


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Worry Beard

He stroked his beard and its prickly resistance felt good across his fingers. It helped him to think, to plot his course, to ponder. Sometimes his fingers became his consciousness and his beard was the worry beads - the worry beard. If you rub your fingers along something coarse or smooth it draws the thoughts down and out of the overladen head. He needed this relief - now.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

The Unique Shining Spirit

“Life is spirit - not its surface view, and not even its workings - it lives, it dwells and is, Spirit. The true character of any place or person, any star or being, is not its divine design, but rather its unique and shining spirit.”

He seemed proud of coming up with that last sentence. She had to admit to herself it sounded pretty profound. She really liked this man.

“That still does not explain the bird poop and your amazing recovery” she laughed.

“It doesn’t explain anything” he said smiling and shaking his head - he thought he caught a glimpse of the great lion standing in the doorway as he said this … but kept that to himself.

“Faith is deeply personal. It's like the love affair you just want to keep secret between you and your lover, and never speak about to the world.”

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Life is neither the Surface nor the Interior

“Why did it seem perfectly natural to be showered in bird poop like that?”

Charley asked this even though she sensed that some things were never to be spoken of … yet still she felt she had to. Was she to regret it?

Francis looked at her with his black brown eyes.

“Some people say that it is better to never question a healing - let alone discuss the affliction, in case it returns” he whispered with mock solemnity. He touched her arm as he said this, and drew a line down to the elbow.

She had to wonder if he was again flirting with her.

“Are you superstitious?” she asked, caught up in a delicious moment. “Do you believe this?”

“Let me see …” he still kept his eyes fixed on hers “yes, and no. The world is not as it seems. We think that the surface view is all that anything is - but, in every single instance one finds that life is neither the surface nor the interior - and if you begin to look closely you can sense perhaps its spirit."


- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Singing Frog

A small frog slipped onto the bed between them. He started to sing and had a surprisingly loud voice that woke Charley from her rest.

“I had no idea Frogs could sing so well” she said drowsily to Francis, who was wide awake and unlike her, had not slept the entire night. He had been watching the little fellow’s performance for awhile now.

Charley had decided to stay with Francis the night of the accident to take care of him, and had not left his apartment for many days since. There was nothing to be found wrong with him, but nonetheless, she had said, she wanted to be ‘sure'.

- Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Inner Purpose

After lifetimes of effort, the soul becomes solid in their sense of inner purpose, finding their useful place … just as a planet settles into its magnetic hold, in relation to the greater dance, the soul of a man, finds itself in relation to the forces and the tensions of those around them - and purpose is derived from this.

Learning in itself is the acquiring and the becoming, thereby - yet even further to that, is the very distillation of this experience in its entirety which offers the soul its capacity to see without and within, in ways that are sophisticated - that they may know.

Knowing fundamentally is gratitude. Cosmic Gratitude.

This mystery is an exciting revelation to come to.

If a ‘teacher’ has not the light in their eyes, or the passion in their speech, or the joy in their heart for the subject they profess - it is reasonable to guess that they do not really know what it is that they are trying to relay. They may have learnt much, but do not know it as yet.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances

Azlan on Knowing & Purpose

The spirit thinks in snapshots amidst a continuum of life eternal: it experiences, it memorises, it forecasts, it reviews - all in bites - like scattered chapters, here and there.

It never loses the overall sense of its self, or of the greater World … it is just that the consciousness does better seeing but one part of the vista before it, at the one time.

It is often said that Life is a ‘path to learning’ - that by default, the Cosmos would set a course for everyone to graduate.

And yet, with that being said, Divinity facilitates far more than merely an obstacle course to enlightenment.

There are two gifts won by arduous enduring: purpose, and knowing.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, AZLANDER: NEVER ENDINGS: Second Chances