Imagine

His name was Edmund G and all kidding aside, this kid could do magic.

Not that Abracadabra slight-of-hand type stuff, but the real deal. The kind that brought wonder to a neighborhood that lacked just about everything a neighborhood could lack-- dough, charm, safe streets, clean air, you name it...

At the center of his power were no fancy wands or white rabbits, but instead his unending unedited unmatched imagination. From his earliest years, he could describe a sun so bright, so powerful, that even on the bleakest days, those he lived with in the projects would shed sweaters to bask in the warmth. He could draw a meal in your mind using only words and rhythms, describing course after course to the point that the listener would be bloated for days unable to entertain even the thought of another bite. And on special occasions he even met with schoolgirls headed off to graduations and Moms to job interviews and imagined bracelets and earrings that glittered on their wrists and arms for just long enough to pick up their diplomas and make nice first impressions, before they then disappeared back into the kid's imagination.

He was his neighborhood's only resource and its sole entertainment; he was their local cinema, he was their weekend in the mountains and their night out on the town-- all wrapped up in one. They treasured him, this youngest and darkest and quietest of 6 children. And at the request of the boy's father, Edmund G Sr, they kept their greatest resource their greatest secret.

See, Edmund G Sr had a father once gifted in the same way. A man who too cheered friends and neighbors with his own assortment of parlor tricks, filled their stomachs with meals fit for Kings and covered their bodies with jewelry, even if only temporarily. But the first of the three Edmunds was an extrovert in a way even the boy could never imagine, so when people from the city learned of his gifts, they summoned him and he happily and expeditiously accepted. He showed his grandeur to the already grand, and at cocktail soirees across the city, he used and abused his powers all in the name of fodder. At the expense of those cousins and friends back home, he tended to the whims of millionaires in penthouses who would shed their diamonds only to watch him create new ones on their very fingers. Mind you, the rich and famous he tended to were always more than generous with their laughter and tips, and though the friends and family back home were hungry for the smiles Edmund once brought to them, he did occasionally send pockets of cash which helped with, if not the dreariness of life, at least their bills.

This continued for years, until the tricks lost their newness prompting the city's most lavish to move on to different magicians, real or otherwise. Edmund latched on with others who were at first easily impressed and soon too lost interest. It would be several more years before it was in fact Edmund who lost, not his latest audience, but his actual powers. They waned, gradually at first and ultimately all at once. The smiles he once evoked, not to mention the cash, came to a halt, and more than a few years after what would have been acceptable, he returned home with, if no tricks or money, simply apology.

Upon returning home, it was immediately clear what he missed in an attempt to procure "the greatest things in life", he had in fact missed just that in the process.