"Hamlet."
The grey eyes blinked wide and black waves swayed as the boy turned, his eyes scaling the figure of the great Danish King with growing wonder and anticipation, curving his lips into a nervous smile.
"Yes, Father?"
He waited below, blinking up at the form that was only a dark silhouette, without defining details or a face. The boy Hamlet waited for his father to speak, but nothing more came from the king and the void in which they found themselves, dissolved into unending darkness.
The lashes of the prince of Denmark opened to reveal the cloth that sheltered his head, the grey eyes staring up into the canopy covering his bed, and seemingly beyond, yet to find the face he had known so well or hear a reply from the deep, noble voice of the man that had once commanded armies into battle, to victory or death, and spoken his name with gentle affection.
A dream where he could never find what it was his father wanted of him, was the solace from a reality where his father's desire was all too familiar to his mind.
The prince, no longer a child, closed his eyes tightly, grasping for the dream and the ignorance that had held in the darkness. But the sun lifted higher into the sky, illuminating his fate, the inescapable life he was trapped in…until the bars could be lifted by his own power, his sword in hand, with the sharpened edge descending upon his uncle's crown…
Until then, he would have no escape…only a dream.