A song for the cold

he winter he turned twelve, the city stopped noticing him at all. No coat. No name anyone bothered to learn. He lay down in the snow behind a shuttered record shop and decided the cold could keep him. He had only ever wanted one thing. To make a sound that would make a stranger stop walking. Something stopped. A voice woke up behind his ribs, and it brought with it every song from a world that is not this one. Music this Earth will not dream up for fifty years. It told him a secret it swore was true, that he was born with the rarest gift a person can carry, and that the world would fight him for every inch of believing it. It is 1970. He is twelve years old, with nothing but a borrowed catalog of the future and a talent no one can see yet. The cold took everything from him once. He is going to make the whole world listen.