His first memories were of music.

It permeated his life. His father would drum his fingers when he was thinking, setting a rhythm Steven soon learned to emulate.

The gentle sounds of his father's guitar would lull him to sleep, along with the sounds of the crashing waves.

It wasn't until later that he learned that Gems were an innately musical species. When they were developing within the earth, their growing consciousness would gradually become aware of the rhythm of the planet. Pearl once compared it to the sound of a mother's heartbeat.

Steven wasn't even strictly sure his own mother had had a heartbeat. What he did know was that she'd sung to him while he was in her womb. He'd been told this by both his father and the gems, although the gems often didn't like to talk about his mother.

Pearl said that the radiation from the stars gave the whole universe a kind of rhythm, universal music that some gems were able to sense when they were out in space.

Steven only knew that he'd taken to music more easily than anything he'd ever tried to learn. He'd learned the ukulele even before he'd lost his first baby tooth.

His human friends had sometimes wondered how he improvised music so easily; he'd always wondered how they couldn't. It was a skill the gems had; they could make music as easily as talking. While his father didn't find it quite as easy, he too was a songwriter.

If defending the earth ever became unnecessary, Steven often thought he might follow in his father's footsteps. He liked making people happy, and in his experience there was little that made people happier than music.

When they were sad it made them feel better. When they were happy it brought them to new heights. It made movies more intense.

Even Dogcopter had an excellent soundtrack, which somehow did not consist of howling and helicopter noises.

It wasn't about fame or money; Steven had never really cared about any of that. It was about people, the only thing worth caring about as far as he was concerned.

He'd never become a doctor like Connie's mom. He'd probably never even go to college; his father didn't have a lot of money, and he'd never even been to elementary school. Besides, Steven wasn't sure that fighting a hideous gem monster would get him excused from tests or studying.

But he could sing, and he could play, and he could make people happy.

It might not be the music of the spheres, but in his universe it would be enough.