The chapter opens with a soliloquy about how buccha is playing the part of the "deer" in the battle, and how the other parts of the team are putting a burden on him. He says that the kids showed that they lost a little bit of their potential in the fight, and that the girls' choir showed up and took the loss, which is better than he expected. He also says that he's going back to lean on the queen, because there's "no thrill" if it doesn't feel scary. The chapter ends with the line, "you took your nighttime, then sweet nightmares" . The narrator says that this is a lesson that he had to learn from a friend, who taught him that the world is not a battlefield, but a "world of birds" , and he wonders if he'll ever be able to find his way back to the battle again.