by Prometheus
The sleek metal doors of the elevator slid open smoothly, lacking any of the audible mechanized hiss that usually accompanied such a device. Cool, somber air met his face, dank with an aged musk.
His feet, releasing themselves from the cables, rolled quietly out onto the fourteenth floor. A thick layer of dust rolled back from each footstep, the soles of his feet meeting the bare metal beneath it. Hands folded calmly beneath the folds of his robe, Turkish Stringfellow paced slowly throughout the charred, ashen level, a reverent sadness to his eyes.
He stopped in the middle of the devastation, fingers running gingerly along the tarnished edge of a once-beautiful gold picture frame, still hanging on a surviving part of the wall. His eyes peered, a gleam of sorrow passing through them, as he could vaguely make out what could have been a picture beneath the cracked, soot-ridden glass. Any images were faded like so much memory, yellow and brittle from the touch of time and flame.
An eyebrow rose as he turned his head toward another corner of the area, nodding his head up and down toward no one.
"Yes... yes, I know..." he spoke in a hushed tone, "...terrible."
He began walking again, his feet carefully stepping along shards of broken glass and splinters of wooden charcoal, reverently disturbing nothing.
His head lowered the entire time, he would occasionally look up toward empty areas of the floor, nodding to an agreement that was not presented.
"Of course..." his voice came again, a wisp of frosty air drifting from his lips, "...tragedy is without judgment."
Stopping again, he turned toward the far back wall, a small smile coming to his lips. "No, thank you. I am not thirsty."
His eyes spun around behind him, narrowing. "I... I have no answers for you. I'm sorry," he replied to no one. "But I would imagine he does..."
He began walking back toward the elevator shaft, his robes billowing in his wake.
"...after all, a child's love is eternal."
He stopped, another small smile coming to his face. "Yes..." he said, nodding, "...yes, I will come to visit you... and perhaps..."
He climbed into the shaft, his toes gripping the cables with ease.
"...perhaps, one day... he will, too."
The elevator doors slid silently closed.