Sawtooth Spire when i've always been distant, and i've always told lies for love

Stag thought of Diaspora often as well -- though he found himself missing most the people there. People dead and gone now, but memories he held onto just the same.

That Mahler was happy here came as a genuine surprise to Stag, who had his own suspicion that perhaps Mahler was a man divided by his inability to settle: not for land, not for women, not for love -- and Stag, but a child in relation to the man, had little else experience to draw his suspicions upon.

Was he happy? Stag would be honest - even at the cost of comfort. "No." He confided. "But it is not Sagtannet I am unhappy with." It was a different kind of unhappiness - a restlessness in the soul that was coming too close to stagnancy. "It's something else. Me, maybe. I miss my family -- it's like I'm here, but I'm barely swimming upstream."