lantern_corps:

The island was nice enough, a tropical climate.  Ganthet had brought them to the beach there, and began his instruction.

"Consider, if you will, the different emotional entities, how they are paired, and from where they arise," Ganthet began.

"Rage and Love, for example, are emotions that are directed towards something.  You feel love for your companion, or rage at those who have wronged you.  They sit the farthest from the center of Will that is at the core of the Emotional Spectrum, because they are emotions of passion, here in one moment, gone in the next, difficult to sustain and yet able to consume one if left to flicker and burn for too long by themselves.

"Greed and Compassion, move closer to the center, and act as more intrinsic emotions.  Greed is a desire for more, never satisfied with what you have, always seeking to possess and control more.  Compassion is the empathy for the suffering of others, the understanding of other viewpoints and situations, feeling for them and seeking to mend them.  These emotions exist more solidly, more states of being that flare-ups of passion.

"Fear and Hope just left and right of center, are different in that while those are emotions that may be felt, as the Emotional Spectrum understands them, they are emotions that can be caused in others.  The Fears that claw at us in the dark, the Hope that tomorrow will be better.  Those who wield the Lights of Fear and Hope are beacons of these emotions, fanning the flames of those emotions around them.  They know them, and how to wield them to best effect.

"Willpower stands at the center, and stands alone.  It is the ability to overcome fear, to turn hope into action.  It is the ability to fight to make compassion a reality and to resist greed's temptations.  It is the ability to temper the fires of rage and the passions of love with the need for clarity and reality.  Though my brothers are wrong in ignoring the other Lights, they were correct when we believed that the Light of Willpower has the potential to be the strongest of them all."

He looked them over.  "To know your Light is to know yourself.  Think, and search within you.  What about you drew your Light to you?"

ms_miracle:

Well, they'd managed to convince their parents (a little less hers, it was high time she moved out anyway, though she was keeping her basement workshop) that their moving in together was a good idea.  The age gap had come up, but they were in love and nothing much was going to stop them even if their parents didn't approve.    Checks had been signed, keys handed over, furniture purchased (Avia wasn't big on throwing around money, but she certainly did have it to throw when she needed it), things packed and later unpacked, the placement of furniture discussed and tweaked...

And they were finally moved in.

And, being finally settled, they were able to throw a housewarming party.  Avia's JLA teammates, Will's JSA teammates, Cindy and the New Guardians, Di and Ri and their Titans friends if they wanted to come... anybody who made their mutual association list.

Ought to be one swinging shindig.

loveontherocks:

So, they had agreed to go the charity ball.  Heather recognized a few people, she thought.  The mayor, for one.  Maybe a couple local celebrities.  And sadly, a fair amount of media coverage inside, though the team had managed to escape at least some of the attention.

She was carrying  a drink.  Not because she could drink it, but because it at least gave her something to do with her hands.  She was a little uncomfortable, she had to admit, with this much of an overt display of wealth and power.

But it was good for them and good for the city and, more importantly, good for the people they'd helped.  She just had to keep telling herself that.

loveontherocks:

"Okay!" Heather called into the rest of the complex. "DVD player's finally set up! We've got movie night!"

Things had been going rather well for her and her fellow Lights. The art show had made her more money than she'd ever had at one time in her life, her parents had somehow managed not to find out, she'd sold a piece to Ralph Dibny and his wife who'd happened to be in Chicago and had used to live in Opal, and had spent a portion of Valentine's Day faintly high off the love fumes.

Which really explained the charge she sometimes got around Cindy and Saishu or Harry and Jess.

Ganthet showed up on his own schedule, getting them to work with their powers or offering some kind of abstract philosophy.

And most of the time, she didn't feel like crying when she looked in the mirror. Pretty good.