68.Jessa and the Beanstalk (3)

I woke in the morning excited to revisit my shining haven, but my window showed only blue skies. There was not a cloud in sight.

And there was no beanstalk. 

"Had it all been a dream?" I wondered as I raced through the fields to the boulder that marked my ladder's root.  There, tucked neatly in the shadows of the stone, a tiny tendril, barely longer than my thumb, rose from the dirt. It was innocent, unassuming. But it was mine.