The chapter opens with Iris’s field notes titled “Rules for a Civilian in the Trenches,” detailing survival practices: staying low, distrusting the open sky and unstable earth, praying against rain, ignoring vermin and lice, rationing food, and keeping lights low to avoid detection. Footnotes expand on trench warfare concepts—artillery barrages, dead man’s zone tactics, wind as an attack indicator, bunker collapse risks, the misery of rain, the recipe for an “egg banjo,” and a cautionary tale about a lit cigarette drawing lethal artillery.

Three days pass in a rotation rhythm: nights in communication trenches and days on the front line. The Sycamores will hold this pattern for seven days before a week of rest. Iris refrains from writing during the day while hunkered beside Roman under threat of hounds and shelling, but at night she plays cards by lantern light and interviews soldiers, gathering stories of families, motives for enlisting, and memories of battles that forged sibling-like bonds among them.

These interactions leave Iris both fulfilled and sorrowful. She misses her mother, her brother Forest, Attie Attwood, Marisol Torres, and the correspondence with “Carver.” The intensity of the front makes revisiting her past difficult, even as the danger sharpens her senses and purpose.

On the fourth night, exhaustion overtakes Iris as she observes Roman across the trench—unkempt, thinner, and far from the polished man she knew at the Oath Gazette—reminding her how little she understands his reasons for being at the front. She falls asleep mid-notes.

Iris dreams she is alone in the moonlit trenches and flees howls of hounds into a bunker that transforms into her family’s old living room. There, her late mother, Aster Winnow, appears, calls her “Little Flower,” and lovingly affirms Iris’s writing and future. The bittersweet exchange underscores Aster’s regret and Iris’s grief, before a voice intrudes, urging Iris to wake.

Iris wakes curled and quietly crying. Roman sits beside her, hand on her shoulder, and reassures her that only he heard. He removes her helmet, gently strokes her hair, and offers a handkerchief. Iris admits she dreamt of her mother; Roman normalizes her tears in the trenches and stays close, returning her helmet and keeping her warm until dawn, marking a tender deepening of their bond.