"But what of the children?"
"Well, perhaps they'll find their way through the streets and the grime, and perhaps when they stare at the broken world that has been left to them, they will see man's great folly. They will see the ruin of what he has aspired to be. They will find food to eat, yes. They will find warm places to sleep, yes. And they will find each other to love. And in the eyes they stare into at night there will be no weakness, but spirit fused with the temperment of steel. There will be nights of sleeping on broken glass. There will be women giving birth onto heaps of scrap metal. But man will take on the characteristics of the glass, and the characteristics of the metal. And so it will be, until man rests again."
"But what of the children?"
"Leave them."
"You're mad," she said, and ran back into the flames, clutching her infant close to her chest.