Hamlet had not returned for his father's funeral. She had insisted that he stay, that his studies were more important. He had agreed, gladly even. After all it was his father who had beat him to the ground and stated he should not return until he had become a man, he who had shipped him off without any chance of farewell to them: to him, to her. It was due to this "loving father" that his goodbyes were written on tear-stained pages, barely explaining his whereabouts; to this "gracious man" that Laertes sent letters filled with hate and fury and pain in regard to every light touch and flutter of butterflies they had ever experienced together; to this "noble king" that Ophelia had yet to write a single one.
Hamlet had not become a true man as his father had hoped, he was a coward, a hateful coward, scared of his own grief, afeared to have to meet these people in the eye once more. It had been years. He wondered if they even resembled to phantoms he painted in his mind when their names surfaced. Did those young and mischievous siblings still have locks as bright as dragon flame? Did his mother have any silver streaking in her raven black hair? Horatio would be there, one comfort on that rotting bed of thorns, yet he feared to see even him again. What if everything he wished and hoped for, dreamt and longed for, was a fantasy in only his mind? What if he returned and found him recently engaged- or even married?
Thus, it was not difficult to decide that study was a far superior choice to the death of a man who only ever raised the bar when his son had almost touched it. It was no struggle to let days bleed into long and troubled nights of reading, writing, and very little sleep indeed. That is, until Hamlet received a letter, not by his mother, but by a fine and well taught hand he did not recognize. It did not state its author, but rather informed him that his mother was lately engaged- to his father's brother. The writer was urgent and insistent on the fact the prince return promptly, yet also implied even with a swift journey it may already be far too late. No personal opinion or reasoning was given to the letter, no hint or clue. He had sent some page to his mother stating he would return after the end of term some two weeks ago, but with this new information that he could not even prove, Hamlet dropped everything and began racing towards home.
His father was not yet cold, and a marriage was being enacted over his grave? His wife already arranging flowers? His brother already proposing? He hated his father, truly. He loved him as well. He had died of natural causes, and yet all of this new evidence screamed of something deeper, some secret purposely kept from him.
Hamlet sensed a disturbance, deep and shaking, that something rotten had now began to take root, not just in himself, but in the whole of Denmark.
