Home Sweet Home

Jackie Morris

The morning breakfasts with the neighbours had ceased shortly after Granoldi had come to live with her. Eve was concerned that he might wake and startle the group unexpectedly causing a possible eviction. It was far too problematic. She made her excuses and eventually they had all stopped coming around. 

The atmosphere of her small home was lit with a charm and a sparkle - so much so that the former inhabitants - her ghosts - had vacated also. Eve had quite forgotten them, and it was perhaps for this reason also, that they likewise, were no longer drawn to her. 

She went in to check on Granoldi and was startled by seeing some blood in his drool seeping into the coverlet.  

“Oh my God!” she exclaimed out loud, hurrying to get closer to see if he was alright. Granoldi had bit his tongue in his sleep, and the bleeding looked worse than it medically was.

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

Sprinklings of Sun Dust

Pine-Needles was going about his usual tasks tidying the apartment while Eve was at the laundromat. Although this aged Dwarf was seasoned in the outdoors, he held an aversion to bugs and spiders, dust and dirt, mould and mildew. Cleaving to cleanliness had only increased ever since his mind was returned with Puck’s glittering influence.

He took particular interest in the window sills, polishing the glass as though it were a prized crystal, and, perched upon a magical ladder of his own construct, he would vacuum into the corners of the ceilings - literally going above and beyond what most cleaners would do.

Needles took particular care with Granoldi’s room, deodorising the Faerie Bear’s bed with sprinklings of sun dust. This was a product widely favoured in the elemental realm.

Eve would return to her refreshed home, thinking to herself what a great job her ioniser was doing - she would literally sigh with happiness walking back through its door. Needles lived for this sigh, and was growing more attached to Eve as time went by. 

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

Last Memory of his Mother

Hans Thoma

“I love you Mam” Jon said under his breath - reflecting on his very last memory of his Mother and how she had cared so much for him. He missed her immensely. No one could take her place. Fruit of her womb, life of her life, breath from her breath, nurtured at her breast. She had given him existence and taken care of him like no other.

A single tear escaped his eye and ran fast away down his cheek. It was as though this one recollection had restored his sanity to its usual pivot. Jon collected himself and then his few belongings, and once again, set off down the empty road before him.

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

Trial by Fire

“Come here my boy, the fire is nothing to be afraid of.”

Jon’s father was being extraordinarily sweet in the way that he coaxed his young son to come forward towards the meltery.

The small boy inched his way closer, but the heat was way too intimidating. There was something strange about his Pa also … Jon was too young to define it, but later in retrospect he would see the unseeable, sadistic cunning.

His Mam called him to her. Only six years old and now he found himself polarised between both Mam and Pa - however he knew which of the two he always knew was the safest choice to go to.

The Ironsmith lurched forward and grabbed him by the elbow, and then abruptly forced Jon’s index finger onto a red hot pot sitting upon the forge. Jon wailed and his mother rushed to pick him up and away.

“I did it to teach him a lesson” the goblin-like father snarled back to her accusing look. “The boy needs to know the dangers of this workplace.”

Mam was appalled, but she had seen this all before. Instead of being proud of his small son, this grown man was jealous. She unwound a red ribbon from her hair and cut a piece off, and then tied it around Jon’s finger.

“I love you little Jon-Jon,” she said apologetically.

“I love you Mam.” he said back to her with a broken smile.

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

Jupiter Fell into the Earthly Realm

Alex Harms

Jupiter, like his brother, was an ageless god. He was not of the Fay technically, and he certainly was not mortal, for the mortals, by definition, were shapeshifters: souls who clothed themselves in all kinds of forms and faces over time - no, he was fixed as he was, unless he effected a glamour … usually. And yet the corporeal world had changed all of that …

A bear had not been his first choice.

When Jupiter fell into the Earthly realm he had been drawn to a menagerie that a magician there had entitled a circus.

In truth it was a compound for the exotic, by which certain people would pay to taunt and tease the creatures and mortals he had enslaved. Some, who paid extra did far worse than that … soldiers and noblemen with money to spare and little conscience would lavish their desires with terrible outcomes. No, this was not a circus for gentle entertainment, it was a migrating caravan of imprisonment and torture.

The circus moved from town to town to escape the eyes of the Law, stealing children as it went, sweeping the greatest amount of coin possible from those who would proffer it.

In an instant Jupiter had gone from diving the lake of the lesser Heavens, into the body of an albino bear - which, was not as he had planned at all.

He had sought to be a Mortal, however what he did not realise is that very few Mortal bodies would vacate themselves for ethereal ensoulment, not even for that of a god. 

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

Her Silent Companion

Eve knew it well it could be thought of as unwholesome … and she did feel just a little shame. But then again, there was something to be said about the pleasure of finding one’s own unique happiness hidden from the world.

It had started one night when she had gone to check on the sleeping Granoldi to place yet another blanket over the big faerie Bear. The nights were getting colder in London and she had bought him several more over the wintery weeks, to save him from any circulatory disorder he could suffer.

Granoldi had become her silent companion, a warm presence in her otherwise empty apartment, and she would lie awake thinking of him being there in the room beside hers.

And then it happened - she could not quieten her thoughts - her iPhone and audio books did not help her get to sleep either and Eve found herself beyond restless. There was no one in the world except the two of them … even her ghosts had gone for the night. Perhaps she should check on him one more time?

Eve’s oversized slippers seemed to drag her feet unwittingly across the floor and into his room. She shuffled in the half light over to where Granoldi was sleeping and pulled back the layers of quilt and blanket she had placed there, she carefully slid into the bed beside him.

That night she slept more soundly than she ever had slept before. 

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

An Accident of Nature

In the rush of the tele-transportation Tu had slipped off his chair into the lap of a finely attired lady, and onto a soft bed of floor cushions and striped woollen mats. All fourteen of the table setting had travelled back, including Goober, whose bony face was stretched wide with a beaming smile.

“You’re going to spasm if you keep grinning like that” Tu said, trying to get Goober to see how serious this situation was. Goober was savouring the moment. The twelve perplexed guests were literally stunned into silence and he couldn’t have been more pleased with himself, or the outcome.

“Well I guess that is one way to win an argument”, Tu conceded.

“It could be termed the full ‘out of body’ experience my boy,” Goober laughed.

The party around them started straightening themselves on their mats and a few stood up looking for the exit. Curiously their silence persisted.

“Waiter!” a short woman in a garish moo-moo called to Parish, a secular brother. He ignored her, not recognising the reference. “Rude” she huffed, “where is the exit out of here?”

All twelve had followed each other through the door and to the gates of the monastery - none appeared to have realized they were actually in a totally different time, not place.

“Shouldn’t we go after them?” Tu asked Goober, who was still finding the humour of it happening.

“Nup” said the senior Elf shaking his head.

“But what about the space-time-continuum thingo - you know, doesn’t it change the world terribly to have people misplaced like this? Won’t events unravel dangerously if we don’t put them back into their own time again? You know, if a butterfly coughs the Amazon shudders?”

“Life always allows latitude. We could not breathe without it. The Space-time-continuum is much more flexible than people think - and besides, it weren’t us that brought them here in the first place. Call it an accident of nature.” He laughed again - not an evil laugh, just a modest chuckle.

Tu felt awake with this pondering. He had somehow been given to believe that the universe he travelled was inflexible: a tangle of Karma and progressive evolution. That one law rested upon another, and it would be too fragile to change.

Goober’s smile softened, and he looked appreciatively at this companion.

“Every atom moves with purpose, and every particle, amongst a confetti of stars, is of living light. The rarefied airs a soul breathes is of kindness, and the substance of Goodness, is itself, Life. Everything else is detail around this: the higher law of Being. Time, Space and its continuum is more - much more - than people think.”

Tu glimpsed the Master in Goober as he said this. He saw clearly that this tall weather-worn melancholic Elf was all that he himself wanted to become …

Fragmented memories hurled their way before his inner eye again, insisting they be acknowledged.

“This nonsense of a tall rabbit, of white fur and blood keeps repeating,” he said closing his eyes tightly, annoyed at himself for losing the sense of peace that had come to him just a minute or so ago.

“It's OK my boy”, Goober said, pushing a bowl of grains towards him, reading his thoughts. “I have a deep apology to make to you … kind-of why I have stuck this close to you. I should have been watching you on that day you were struck down, I should have looked out for you this time too. I am so very sorry.”

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