Something Special

Know what I saw today? Snowflakes.
In their honour, have a story:

He was born in the south, and not very long ago. Fair-haired and golden-skinned, he was a child who shone in the sunlight. He was bright and full of laughter and energy, and could never be persuaded to sleep until after sunset, though his parents knew if they waited until then, he would be good, and even easy to lull to sleep.
He loved to be outdoors. Rainy days always left him less enthused, quiet and lethargic. On one sunny day he was playing in the backyard, swinging on the jungle gym and rolling around with a stuffed puppy named Bruce. He stopped rolling, sitting on the warm grass, squinting at the bright sky. His mother asked him what he was thinking. “I have a secret,” he told her, but would say no more. She fed him hot dog pieces with ketchup, and he went back to his playing.
That night, while being tucked into bed, the boy whispered to his mother that he wanted to tell her his secret. “What is it?” she asked, and he told her, “The sun shines just for me.” The mother smiled at her son, enjoying his odd comment. She kissed him goodnight, and he fell asleep quickly.
She didn’t forget what her son had told her, though it was only a passing comment that he never repeated.

That winter the family went on a trip to Canada, where the father had a business conference and thought his son would like to see snow for the first time. There was no snow when they arrived, though, just many clouds and cold wind.
It was the last day of their visit and the mother and son were walking along the sidewalk, hand in hand. They passed a young woman walking in the opposite direction, and as she passed by, the boy looked at her, and she smiled back at him.
She was older, but not so old that she’d lost that magic that belongs to the young. She was more quiet than exuberant, she smiled much but seldom laughed, her hair was dark but her eyes were bright. She liked the summer and reveled in the colours of autumn, but she waited all year for the winter. Since she was young, she’d always been able to smell the snow that was ready to fall.
She stopped walking when she saw the boy looking at her. She leant down, level with him, as he approached, his mother watching pensively from behind. “I have a secret,” the boy told her, just as he’d told his mother so many months before.
“I know your secret,” the girl quietly smiled as she said it. His mother’s brows dipped in curious confusion- what was this stranger going to say to her son?
“The sun shines just for you, doesn’t it?” the woman whispered. Before the mother could register her shock, the stranger continued, “Do you know my secret?”
The little boy smiled and looked up at the slatey clouds overhead. “It snows just for you.”
And as the first flakes the boy had ever seen started to float down over the city, the stranger-who was not at all strange to the boy, nor he to her- smiled back, and nodded her head.