But one morning, a green thread unspooled from the ground—thin as a thought, yet stubborn. Eli protected it from goats, wind, and his own doubt. The sprout stretched into a stem, then branches, then leaves like tiny fans. Within months, it stood waist-high. By the next season, it towered over Eli, a wild, sprawling mustard plant with yellow flowers that shimmered like captured sunlight.

Days passed. Nothing. Weeks. The other farmers laughed. “You’re watering dust,” they said.

“You said this would grow into something,” Eli said. “You never said it would grow into everything.”

Eli didn’t just grow a mustard plant. He grew a whole new beginning. From that single, laughable seed came a thicket so large that travelers used it as a landmark. Children played in its shade. His wife wove mustard plasters that healed the village’s aches. And when the merchant passed through again, older now, Eli pressed a handful of new seeds into his palm.