Spiky Hair

Needles looked everywhere trying to find his words - yet sensed that they were now long gone and nowhere to be found. Neither here, nor there; along with their many accompanying thoughts, these words, like others before them, had vanished too far from his mind’s reach to be able to recall them.

He splashed his face with muddy water; its red iron particles settled deep into the wrinkles crinkling his face. His eyes were aquamarine, and his pyjamas of pale blue silk. Silver-white spiky hair haloed his ancient head.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self, Second Guesses AZLANDER Series

A Single Sigh

Eve hurriedly made her way to the car, forgetting to pause the video recording. Although dark in her purse, the streaming continued. The Vauxhall stuttered before starting.

Eve began to cry, and as though in sympathy, the clouds emptied their heavy rain straight at her windscreen. She pulled over into a grassy lane, to wait out the storm.

Although Eve had not lost a child herself, she had miscarried in the first trimester - and this most painful of memories stalked her otherwise happy life. She closed her eyes for a single sigh, and then gave way to the grief once again.

“Are you going to be blubbing there all day?” asked a curious voice from behind her.”

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- Azlander Series

Stone Cottage

Standing in a tiny stone cottage on the very same spot a stillborn had lain some hundreds of years earlier, Eve’s heart was racing, for in her mind’s eye she could see the mother weeping with painful clarity. It was a pitiful image.

On leaving, Eve brushed past the arched door where there were dents in the splintering wood: these markings were from where a witch had whacked her knuckled stick, trying to force her way into the cottage to souvenir the child just born.

It was all too real these ghosts she felt.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- AZLANDER Series

Eve Piquet, Psychic Detective

“I can sense a lot of pain in this room,” she said solemnly into her phone, emphasising each whispered word thickened with meaning.

Eve Piquet was a psychic detective, with a following of five on Youtube. She had been hoping to build on those numbers by video cataloging her sensitive encounters, which were excitingly streamed ‘live’ amongst the ghosts.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- AZLANDER Series

Dragon Diamond

The Diamond, that had clinked its way into the bottom of a jagged rock pool, had been deposited into the dune, by a Dragon of the Fires. He had in fact coughed it up quite literally, being partial to the forest coal, feeding on refuse and small animals as well. It was, of course, the nuggets of coal that had gone to make Tindle’s jewel.

What may be a stone in the gall to a man, is a diamond in the intestine, to these most ancient of beasts.

-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses- AZLANDER Series 

Many kinds of Dragon

There are many kinds of Dragon: not only those of the Salamander who spit fire and ignite the cosmic furnaces; there are also the Dragons of the sky, who are of two classes: the water (the clouds) and of the wind (the future). There are also those of the storms, and of the past; and some, that are so evil one should never ever name them.

And, it is said, they quite often fight one another - and when two Dragons combat, the earth becomes jittery; and the angels, irritated.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses, AZLANDER Series

Diamond Days

Amidst the music of the wind and the waves, Tindle thought he could hear his mother calling him home “Nathan, Nathan”. (Nathan was his Christian name.)

And it was only when, as a very elderly old man, did Tindle look back into his former days with the clarity and wisdom of a supernatural review - when the memory unlocks the happiest of times - and there, chair-bound, his tired mind saw himself as a child holding the diamond he had left behind, and only then he realised what it was he had lost.


-Gabriel Brunsdon, Finding Self - Second Guesses: Azlander Series