"I want to do a circle," Steph said, looking at all of us now. "Before you go to the hospital. A simple one, just the four of us. It doesn't have to be formal, but it will help. It will set the intention—that she's coming into a place of safety, that the birth is witnessed and blessed."

Mama nodded, her hand closing around the stones. "Yes," she whispered. "I want that."

Steph smiled, the kind of smile that held both grief and joy in equal measure. "Then we'll do it when the time comes. When the contractions start and before you leave. We'll cast the circle, we'll speak her welcome, and then we'll let you go do the hard work."

That night, Mama kept the three stones on the mantle next to the fire, where they caught the light and seemed to pulse with their own small rhythm. I watched her looking at them before bed, her hand resting on her belly, and I knew something had shifted. She wasn't just waiting anymore. She was preparing. She was becoming.

The final days of January felt like the world was holding its breath. The physical toll was becoming undeniable. Mama's movements were slow and deliberate, every change in position a negotiation with gravity. The "drift" happened more often now, not as a reaction to trauma, but as a symptom of her mind already moving toward the labor—a quiet, internal focus that left her staring at the fire for hours.

We lived in a state of constant readiness. The "Go-Bag" sat by the door, an orange beacon against the grey stone. Steph checked in every day, her voice a grounding wire through the phone. Even the weather seemed to understand the stakes; the rain stopped, replaced by a biting, crystal-clear frost that made the mountains look like they were made of glass.

I looked out the window at the silhouette of the Twimp against the starry sky. The stars were painfully bright—the kind of brightness that only comes when the air is so cold it's sharp enough to cut. The frost had painted the garden white, every blade of grass stiff and glittering. In London, February was just a month of slush and commuters. Here, it felt like a season of destiny. We were seventeen, and in a few days, the world would never be the same again. But as I looked at Peter snoring lightly in his armchair and the warmth of the cottage around us, I realized we weren't afraid of the change. We were ready for it.

The little bird was coming home.