Sam

Once upon a time in a land far far away, there lived a boy. He was a handsome boy.
He was a prince. Or so they told him. He'd never felt like
a prince; always being told what to do
and where to go and just what he should be doing when he went. He'd never felt that his
life was his own. And now it was. It was a secret. One that ran to the very core of his existence.
He was no prince. If fact he was far from any kind of prince. They told him that princes were bold,
brave, and strong. They told him that princes grew up to be valiant Kings, nobly serving their
subjects with honor and valor and unwavering conviction. This boy was none of these things.
He knew nothing of valour and courage; of strenth or conviction. He really felt he knew nothing at
all. He knew this though - he was no prince. And he was running away. He was tired of all the lies,
all the secrecy; always pretending to be someone and something he was not.
He knew that the life he was living was no life at all. There had to be something
else out there. Something more than what he had now. So he packed up and left just before the break
of dawn. And he was gone. Never to be a prince again. Never to be told where to go and who to be.
He was his own. He learned to play the harp and played in an inn not 50 leagues outside his home kingdom.
And he made certain that no one knew he was once called, "your highness" and "prince". As he played,
as he lived, he learned of all the things he'd been told about. All that the
lessons and books had described. He married and had a few girls and learned what the word courage meant.
Living taught him that valour wasn't just for kings, it was for all people.
He learned that every boy could be a prince. What he thought he had to be in order to be a prince
had always been apart of him. He just hadn't known how to see it. It was as if the boy hadn't known
his own name. When he played then harp, when he went home at night, he knew his name.
One day the boy ventured back to his kingdom. Things hadn't changed much, but he had changed. He walked with conviction and honor; the look of bravery etched in his face and the gleam of boldness in his eyes. The King and Queen hardly recognized the boy who had left them so many years before. They had sent many valient Knights to look for the boy but none had ever returned with word of his whereabouts. When the boy had left, he'd been a boy. The boy returned now a prince and a man. They welcomed him back with open arms.

His fellow townsfolk had
always known that the boy was the runaway prince. And they'd known the boy's name all along.
They'd seen in him the prince he could have been and the man he always had been.
They knew he needed to find a way to see. They never called him "Your Highness" or
"Prince". They knew he would learn those names in time. They called him Sam.