Iris attempted to frame her article about the war, contrasting expected images of battles and strategies with the lived reality of a locked-down town, prowling hounds, and a school-turned-infirmary full of wounded and resilient people. She paused, overwhelmed by emotions and the presence of her mother Aster’s ashes on her desk, and admitted to herself that she did not know how to write about war, though she chose to view it through the lens of loss.

Attie knocked and suggested a walk. The two left through Marisol’s garden into a nearby golden field, where the quiet and movement eased Iris’s tension. Attie voiced a suspicion that Marisol might be misleading them about her wife Keegan’s whereabouts, perhaps for protection, though she conceded she might be imagining it. Iris believed Marisol would tell them if it were important.

As they walked, Iris asked if one could fall in love with a stranger—someone never met and unnamed but connected. Attie, a romantic, said that in these times anything seemed possible. The conversation buoyed Iris as they returned from the quiet field.

That night, Iris wrote her correspondent a list of what she knew and did not know about him, highlighting that she still lacked his name. After an anxious wait, he replied that she already knew the important parts but that she could call him “Carver,” a name Del once used for him. Iris responded by sharing her own name, Iris, which he greeted warmly, teasing “Little flower.”

They exchanged brief letters about names and meanings. Iris described childhood teasing over her name and her mother’s tradition of naming women after flowers. Carver reframed “iris” as a verb meaning “to make iridescent,” suggesting they shape their names into what they wish.

Iris then drafted a formal letter to the commanding officer of E Brigade, restating Forest Winnow’s assignment to Second E Battalion, Fifth Landover Company under Captain Rena G. Griss, and requesting an update or address, noting her station at Avalon Bluff as a Tribune war correspondent.