Sleeping Beauty

The king slept. The dreams which invaded his sleep were not pleasant. The king did not sleep sweetly. Images passed through his mind. Images that made him sweat. Images that at any other time would cause him to wake up this time did not. The king slept, captive to a hundred year slumber waiting for a prince to wake his daughter with a kiss.

The king dreamt of the christening party for his daughter Aurora. Fifteen of the fairies had given their presents. The usual granting. Looks, singing voice, wealth. Then Malevocent had appeared. The most powerful of them all. He knew it had been a mistake not to invite her. Now the image of the flames which declared her coming would haunt him for a century. Even in the arms of Somnus, the words still brought fear. His daughter would grow up then, on her sixteenth birthday, prick her finger on the spindle of a spinning wheel and die. He barely heard the last fairy speak, even in the horrified silence that followed the departure of the curser. That, even though she could not undo Malevocent's words, the girl would not die. Instead Aurora would sleep for one hundred years until woken by true loves kiss.

These words brought little comfort, as the King and Queen watched three of the fairies take their daughter into the woods. The dream state did nothing to remove the sorrow, and if anything made it more bitter.

The king, sat in his throne, tossed with horror as he watched once again the fires. In his love for his daughter the king destroyed the livelihoods of many burning spinning wheels across his land. Yet, as with every great man, he had a great weakness.

In his dreams the king looked out of the window to the woods. His heart hoped that what he had done was enough. A corner of his heart still feared for what was to happen.

Then there was the hope as his daughter came out of the woods. No longer a child in a blanket but a woman. There meeting was clumsy as he embraced the princess who did not know him. Then she went to meet her mother.

In his joy that his daughter was back and safe, the king was ignorant. It was not until he felt sleep come rapidly upon him that his majesty realised what he had done. In his love for his wife he had not burnt her spinning wheel. His love had made him weak. It could never had been that spindle, not the one on his wife's toy. And with that mixture of guilt and horror the king once more entered the cycle of images that, because of his being blinded by love would be his jailer during his hundred year sleep.