The Shepherd of Living Roots

Dawn painted the terraced gardens in shades of amber. Aylin's knees pressed into damp earth, her breath misting in the cool air. The plot before her had changed overnight.

The pale green stalk had thickened into something that pulsed. Like an umbilical cord. She watched the rhythm, counting heartbeats that shouldn't exist in a plant.

The bulb at the vine's end trembled. Split.

A lamb emerged. Wool white as monastery parchment, legs folding beneath a body no larger than her cupped palms. It bleated—a sound so ordinary, so impossible—and the world tilted.

Aylin's hands shook as she reached forward. The lamb pressed its nose into her palm, warm breath against her skin. Real flesh. Living warmth. Tethered to the vine by a cord that pulsed in time with its tiny heartbeat.

"Like grafting," she whispered, voice cracking. "But grafting life itself."

Her fingers traced the umbilical connection, feeling the surge of something vital flowing from root to creature. Years in monastery libraries, dust coating her tongue as she copied fragments of Persian text by candlelight. Colleagues dismissing her theories with polite laughter. All of it vindicated in this one impossible moment.

The lamb nuzzled deeper into her palm, seeking comfort the way any newborn would. Its wool was softer than she'd imagined, impossibly real despite growing from a plant. The vine's leaves rustled in the morning breeze, creating a chorus with the lamb's soft bleating.

She knelt there, transfixed. The Vegetable Lamb was real. She had made it real.

Her breath came faster. Laughter bubbled up, or perhaps tears—she couldn't tell which. The lamb's dark eyes watched her with animal trust, unaware it represented the culmination of everything she'd sacrificed to reach this moment.

The sun climbed higher, gilding the terraced plots in gold. Around her experimental vine, the other plantings showed similar swelling bulbs. Dozens of them. The instructions from the crumbling manuscript had worked perfectly.

She cradled the lamb, feeling its heartbeat against her wrists. A miracle made manifest through soil and seed and stubborn scholarly obsession. The scholars who'd dismissed her would have to see this. Would have to believe.

The thought filled her with warmth, spreading through her chest like the first sip of wine after a long fast.

Behind her, footsteps crunched on the gravel path. She turned, the lamb still cradled in her arms, ready to share her triumph. To show the world what wonder looked like when dragged from myth into reality.