War breaks out. Men leave. Towns withdraw into themselves. And in the countryside, people learn how to survive without uniforms. Gertrude von Homburg, a minor noblewoman from Lorraine, flees the burning of her estate and finds refuge in an isolated farmhouse, deep in unfamiliar country. At her side is Juta, a practical, rugged, and tenacious Swiss cook. Two women with nothing in common. Two temperaments forced to share the same roof in a house without comfort, in a world stripped of its bearings. Far from drawing rooms and battlefields, 1870 lingers on daily gestures, the compromises of cold, and the tensions of a shared exile. In this rural confinement, they will have to learn how to live together. To understand one another — or to clash. A story of quiet collapse, of silences grown too full. And perhaps, in the hollow of routine... something begins to be born. Translated from French by Ysis.