"Ah, but people are not your possessions," Saint Walker gently corrected her. He was well aware of the practice of asceticism. He had practiced it in some small degree back on his home planet, preferring to keep his possessions to a minimum, but in recent years, he simply found that he did not re-accumulate all that had been lost.

"Sometimes, we lose people," he said, as blunt as ever as he glanced up at the model hanging from the ceiling. "It is such a painful thing, and yet we continue to reach out to them, new and old. It is impossible not to; even one living in absolute solitude is connected to more people than they may wish to admit."