A new dawn cracked through the door of Hannah's new log home. Sucking in a breath, Hannah sat up confused as to where the green light went, wondering if she was home. Hearing the hiss of the dying fire, she realized she wasn't home, but she wasn't in the same place she was before. She had a bed. A fucking bed. It was beautiful. But her tummy growled and itched something awful. As she reached down to scratch her swollen womb she realized she had grown even more. With her son, she had grown quite fast when she progressed in trimesters but the growth she was feeling seemed a little fast. If she was home she would check to see if she had twins. Remembering the ultrasound, she hoped that what they found was what she was carrying. Giving birth alone terrified her. She had done it before but she had a midwife and a hospital down the street.

She was starving and stranded in the middle of nowhere with no prenatal care. She didn't even have a crib. Feeling the tips of her ears she realized they were pointed again, like how she was born. Freaking out, she rubbed the bridge of her nose, realizing her old nose returned too. She probably had her pointy ass chin back again too. Whatever was going on in this world was changing her, hopefully for the better. There wasn't much she could do to stop it from happening, any more than she could stop her home from improving. There was now a window and a chimney, and a cooking rack over the fireplace. The floors seemed grouted and the walls were insulated. The makeshift rack she had yesterday was replaced with a wooden shelf, holding her jars, utensils and shovels. The wooden board she set aside to eat off of now looked like a wooden plate. And a few of the weeds that had been sitting in the tent had been dried and bottled. They must be spices. Yay spices, boo birth in the wild.

Feeling a bit more secure with her environment, Hannah decided to go ahead and eat half of the bottled food. And then she finished it all before moving onto the garden. She ate a handful of fruit from each loaded plant she could find until her ravenous hunger was sated. She noticed that the plants in the garden had blossomed overnight again, and the fruits from yesterday had rotted off the vines, causing new plants to begin sprouting. "This is gonna be troubling" she said aloud to herself as she began relocating the little plants. Her baby bump was starting to become troublesome to move around.

Hannah's trips to the river became faster to traverse without searching for vegetation. With the collection she had now and the turnover of the crops she was bound to have more work than she could handle. In all probability the garden was going to explode and overgrow and there was little she could do about it. Either way, that meant food, which meant life for her and her child. Now she just had to secure protein and make sure the red wheat grew... which it did. And some grains had fallen off and taken seed in the ground next to it. Hannah scooped up what she could collect and tossed them into her backpack. She had to make separate trips because she wanted to keep the harvested crops separated. She spent the morning weaving baskets to hold her produce and then got back onto her swollen feet to check the game trail for meat. Trudging through the wet forest, Hannah realized that there was something wrong with her pregnancy. What if she gave birth early? Her womb had grown so drastically that her skin was torn and itchy. She needed to find some game today. She licked her cracked lips as she found trap after trap set off or untouched with nothing caught. It wasn't until she had almost given up hope when she saw a bright orange bunny sandwiched in one of her traps.

"Oh That's so awesome." she said as she grabbed the bunny from the trap. The big trap she set with some thick logs had rigged and smashed the thing. It was the size of a cocker spaniel. It's teeth could rip through her arm easily if it ate meat. As she skinned and gutted the bunny she finally saw what these cute little bunnies ate. Other bunnies. And they surrounded her cabin. After carrying the meat back to her cabin, she threw it on the grill, and set up a fence of sticks pointed outwards, so if one of those bunnies come at them, they'll possibly impale themselves, or scratch themselves if the sticks broke. Hannah had fashioned a make shift rock axe from a broken bit of axe but the rock kept breaking apart into smaller pieces until she discarded it onto her shelf for future use. Hannah generously ate the rabbit meat and hung the meat that had began to dry from some sticks she hung from the ceiling. Her door seemed pretty solid as she jammed a log against the opening. She didn't plan on going outside for the rest of the day. The rabbits had her spooked. Hopefully they only ate each other, but the fact that they were meat eaters made her sick with worry. Hannah spent the afternoon using sharp rocks to begin crafting a little crib to keep her child in, in case they came early. She ripped off the arms to her sweater so she would have something to wrap the child in. Hannah had given birth before so she knew what to expect, but that didn't make her any less worried.

With her environment improving overnight, and her efforts to improve her life there, she had hope. But what she didn't have was a medical degree, or medicine, or emergency measures. So many things could go wrong in childbirth. All she could do at this point was prepare. When she saw that her wooden bucket had turned into a metal pot, she about cried tears of joy. At least she would have boiling hot water. She was so dirty she could get an infection so easily. Fortunately her new log home was relatively clean and her camp was now sprinkled with river rocks to help walk around the camp when it was muddy. Finishing with her last round of river rocks, she hurried to the river to grab some water to boil in her metal pot. Using the rest of her sweatshirt as a towel, she gave herself a hot wash inside her cabin, rubbing her swollen belly with some of the rendered fat from the bunny. The bright orange coat of fur was sitting outside waiting to be tanned. The coat of fur was going to be the bedding for this crib. And if the weather turns cold it could warm her child. She wasn't sure if whatever was happening at night would continue forever or what was really going on. All she knew was that in this moment she had food water and shelter. If it weren't for the madness of being alone, and separated from Caleb, she would say she was doing okay.

This was much better than when she was scrambling while pregnant with Caleb. If it hadn't been for Mike's mother, she would have been thrown out of the village. While being a BIrtha was a privilege, the Dusties didn't allow unwed mothers because their children usually belonged to their husbands. The Dusty wives would force a DNA test on any unclaimed child and if it belonged to their husband they would be able to claim custody. Usually these children became property of the dusty wife because they had more power with the law. At the time, she knew the Caleb's father was pursuing a dusty woman for a wife. When she grappled with that reality she knew she wanted to keep her child and finally told Mike she would marry him, so her child wouldn't be taken away. Mike was happy when she finally told him about the child, and even happier when he came a month early with no health problems. He treated her like gold shined out of her ass for a good six months. Then he started getting distracted by his phone a lot, and he started coming home later and later with believable excuses. The red flags were all there. Hannah wasn't happy and had planned on leaving him. It had been 4 years without any more pregnancies, and she had thought he hadn't noticed the birth control she snuck into a jar of ibuprofen. He hadn't even touched her in a year, but when she was dropped off drunk from her class reunion she woke up naked next to Mike holding the bottle of ibuprofen and found herself pregnant after that.

Although she hadn't planned this child she was excited for its arrival. It was a little girl. She heard once when she was little that little girls are born with all the eggs they're going to have in their life, and their mother creates those. So even her grandchild will be a product of an egg she made. Could she survive this birth in the wilderness? She was so sick of being alone. "Thank you!" she shouted into the air as she slunk her body onto her bouncy mattress. Thinking of the ways she could improve her life here, and prepare for the child, like bottles, diapers, pain killers, and antibiotics. Her worries multiplied as she counted the things she needed in order to survive. The list was so long that she didn't fall asleep until the sun rose. She had planned on catching her benefactor if she could stay up all night, but as the sun rose she realized they didn't come. Resigned to her fate, she finally drifted off.