The world is a stormgate, constantly holding back a torrent of water that beats upon it. And though it is worn to near ruin, the gate does not falter, does not concede to the water. It only stands. Of course the powerful waves that this stone gate holds back are far more impressive than it. But still it will never lose.

I am the sea, and my prison, the stormgate. No matter how hard I've pushed in these five centuries the great tree in which I am bound to has hardly budged. I am but a prisoner to its mechanisms. I must feel as men cut through my limbs yet do not free me. As children climb yet I may not speak my words to them.

Though at that point I admit that I was hesitant I even had words left to say.

I was reduced to a forgotten thing. Lifeless and abandoned, a thing that could rot so easily. So fragile, so, weak. The clergymen who placed me here are long dead by now, yet still I could hear their laughter at their victory over me.

Yet there is a branch of hope. Recently my stormgate has changed, an opening appeared when I have been chosen by a savior. Young she is, but certain in her decision. She took one look at me and understood my greatness, despite my ruin. All it took was a point of her tiny finger to capture my freedom.

"Why yes Abigail, it seems this one would make for an excellent rocking horse" Her father replied in childlike talk to his daughter. What she actually meant by her pointing he did not know.

He approached and sized me up and down, and that was all. By the next week I was something new. Not a tree but a new shape born of the old, a horse it seemed, a poor excuse for the real things. Even poorer than the original, humongous creatures that wandered the hellish plains.

She was overjoyed to see my new form. I was simply happy to no longer be a tree. But something more, I was happy to be known, almost seen.

When I mumbled she listened. When I ached she halted her play. And when I grew attached she already was. For the first time in five-hundred years somebody remembered that I existed and loved me for just that. Nothing more, nothing less.

And though the stormgate still existed, still held back my true form just underneath, I understood that now, my wait would not be so bad anymore.