In the beginning, the Bean did not announce itself. It waited. And beneath it moved innumerable workers, unseen and unnamed, carrying messages between decay and life. They spoke no language known to men, yet everything listened. The farmers learned early that the ground could not be instructed. It responded only to care, and care required attention rather than force.
Thus they fed what they could not see, trusting that order existed even when unobserved. Others mocked them, saying, “You tend myths beneath your feet.” And the farmers replied, “So do you, though you call them NPK.”
And the ground remembered.
It remembered what was rushed, what was stripped, and what was honored. And it returned each in its season.
And this was the first truth: what sustains life rarely draws attention to itself.