Chapter 60

Charley eyed the gauntlets in her hands. “Could I try them on?”

Dawn smiled. “Remember, the gauntlets are not about power. Lust for power is the Nekura. The gauntlets are a way to channel a connection with the Light. The connection is different for everyone. The relationship to the Light is not standardized. The Light lives and manifests differently for each person.”

Charley slipped the gauntlets over her arms. They fit snuggly.

“Charley, do you want to be connected like that?” Thom asked.

She looked down at the thin metal strips on her hands, at their exposed filaments and wires.

It was what she always hoped for, what she always dreamed of—something more. For her identity to finally be determined by something outside of herself. To no longer have to generate her own value and meaning by toiling with no end in sight, except for the constant reminder of her failures. To stop scrounging for significance but to be given it freely. She breathed out the answer, and with it she breathed out the anvil that had weighed on her chest for years.

“Yes, I want that.”

In a flash, a living whip of blue light appeared in her hand, extending down to the floor in a long, prehensile coil. It slowly curled and unwound on the concrete. The whip was like a live electric cord, severed and sizzling.

“It’s amazing,” Charley whispered.

She wasn’t looking at the whip. She was distant, in an altogether different place.

“Well, aren’t you going to try it, Charley?” Henry asked.

She looked down at the whip. It danced for her like she was a snake-charmer. She picked up her arm and snapped it with meager effort. The whip recoiled with a vicious snap and a crack that echoed in the workroom.

Dawn grinned. “It is yours. It is the power of the Light more than your own effort or ability. It is channeling through you.”

“I feel it. I can’t describe it.”

Something more. That was what she had needed. She looked down and smiled.

Finally, it had come.