[align=center][fancypost bgcolor=;border:0;width:450px;text-align:justify;font-size:10.5px;line-height:1.4]He flips the skull into his paw, an awkward manoeuvre that he manages nonetheless, sat back on his haunches and staring into the vacant holes of its empty eye sockets, dead and polished, bone smooth and off-white, creamed with age. It's been a while since he's done this, indulged in himself, but he can still remember the first time; he was but a small child, and this was the first monologue he learned, something that filled him with the oddest sense of pride, and he rushed to his mother and father to tell them, not understanding the words but loving them anyway, and they grinned their approval at him.
The second time, it was over their corpses, his father's skull perched on his paw. Still, it's one of his favourites, despite the memories and dull ache in his chest. He clears his throat, tongue darting out almost nervously at first, before he breaks out into steady speech, claws clutching the upper jaw of his prop.
"To be, or not to be? That is the question—
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles,
And, by opposing, end them? To die, to sleep—
No more— and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to— 'tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished! To die, to sleep.
To sleep, perchance to dream— ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life."
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