“Does it hurt?” Jeremy asks Sarra. She’s wearing gloves on her hands, made from synthetic fibres that Conor claims originated on another planet. Jeremy’s not convinced of this, despite the fact that he’s standing on the shore of an invisible island. Together, he and Sarra look out at the sparkling night lights of Genoa City.
“It’s okay,” she says and smiles at him. He likes her, she knows. She doesn’t know how much she likes him, yet.
“That’s not what I asked,” Jeremy looks at her so seriously she’s almost tempted to laugh. Truth is, she’s also a little touched.
“Yes, it hurts,” she says. “But it’s not so bad. The gloves help.”
“Alien gloves,” says Jeremy doubtfully.
“Yes, alien gloves,” Sarra purses her lips. “It’s all true, you know. You saw what I can do. That’s just the beginning.”
“The beginning of what?” asks Jeremy. He bends down to pick up a handful of pebbles from the shore and begins skipping them across the water.
“Come with me,” says Sarra and extends one gloved hand to Jeremy. He looks at it uncertainly for a moment before taking it. “There’s something I want to show you.”
They walk together, hand in hand, Jeremy scuffing his feet in the sand. He doesn’t know where to look or what to say. It’s all too much. They reach a narrow pier that extends a short distance out into the lake. There is a small rowboat is tethered to the end of the pier.
Sarra leads Jeremy to the end. Letting go of his hand, she drops to the wooden planks. Jeremy sits down beside her, their feet dangling a few feet above the water.
“Watch this,” she says and Jeremy notices a definite twinkle in her eye. Sarra removes her right glove and extends her hand over the water. Jeremy watches as her skin begins to glow, first in fleshy tones of red and orange before growing so bright that Jeremy can barely make out the shapes of her fingers amid the brilliance.
For a moment he thinks this is it, that her power is all that she wanted to show him. But then a wall of water rushes up, battering them against the wooden deck.