Radiance

Sunrise

|Sabre|

"Sabre! Sabre!" I open my eyes to a grinning face in mine. Orange smiles and sits beside me on the bed. With a slight groan I rub my eyes and sit up a bit, feeling disoriented.

"Sleep well?" Orange grins and I laugh a bit. 

"Was until you woke me up," I say and rub my face, tracing over some of the imperfections of my skin with my fingers. Orange rubs his fluffy hair in embarrassment and laughs a bit himself.

"Sorry."

"It's fine. Why'd you wake me up so early?" I say as I glance out the Balcony entrance, seeing that the sun hadn't even come up yet and it was still pretty dark out. Orange grins and looks outside as well. "Well, I wanted to take you someplace right quick since we've had to deal with a lot of things recently."

He turns back to me and I give him a questioning look. Should we go anywhere? We still had the Darkness to deal with and Nightmare Steve was becoming a bit more of an issue for us recently.

"Oh come on, it'll help us relax a bit." Orange says before he stands up and tugs the covers off of my legs a bit. With an exaggerated eyeroll, I chuckle and get up, stretching my wings carefully so I didn't knock into anything.

Orange bounces downstairs, a bit of a happy mood to his step. I smile at the sight of him at least being happy today and reach over to my side to grab my chicken hoodie. It had a few stains in the feathers by now, but hey, it was a gift from Dropsy back when we were younger and I didn't have the heart in me to get rid of it. Plus, it was my signature look.

A chicken.

Ironic considering I was kind of one when it came to certain circumstances and fights in this world. 

I wince at that thought and slide it on over my wings, then attach the two flaps in the back together so that they wouldn't be all over the place. As I finish, I look at my wings and bite the inside of my cheek, noticing so many feathers were offset and needed preening.

"Sabreeeeeeeeee!"

"Coming!" I say as I get to work on preening my wings. Mean, had to look semi-presentable and preen these occasionally. If I had a lot of my feathers out of place, it would also interfere with my flying and get annoying. "Having to straighten your feathers again today?" Orange peeks his head up from the stairs and I look up, nodding.

"Yeah, they are hard to fly with if I don't go through them sometimes." I mutter as I get back to work. A shiver runs down my back as I feel hands working on the other side of my wing, straightening feathers. I lower the wing a bit to see Orange, who looks up at me.

He looks off to the side, rubbing his neck.

"Um- Should I have asked first or-?" I shake my head and chuckle. 

"Nah, It's fine. I'm... just not used to having anybody else helping me with my wings." Orange meets my eyes and I glance down at my wings. His hands were... Gentle. It felt like having somebody rubbing my back softly, which was... comforting. A feeling I hadn't had in a while.

I give him a cheesy smile, then get back to straightening. It didn't take us long before they were all straightened and the loose feathers were all plucked out and in a neat pile on my bed.

Standing up from the bed, I go to stand in the middle of the room and fully stretch out my wings. A few pops sound and I fully stretch out. With a sigh, I pull my wings back in and look over to Orange who grins. 

"You ready now?" He bounces a bit and I laugh, grinning. 

"Yep! Lead the way Orange."

We walk downstairs and out the front door with a cool morning air greeting us. I make to ask Orange again what he wanted to show me, but he hops and starts to fly up, the wind making his hair flow a bit. He looks back at me and I smile and stretch out my wings, to fly up. He immediately goes to fly slightly in front and above me and we both reach the top of the statue in the hub.

"Alright, what did you want me to see Orang-" I trail off as he motions to our left where the sky was colored with beautiful tones of orange and red and pink. The sun peaked over the horizon over the vast expanse of trees that stretched farther than I could see. Stars still hung above us which made the entire thing gorgeous.

"I wanted to show you the sunrise, since today is a day where Steves in the past would have gathered together to celebrate the year. And well... I haven't really celebrated it with anybody else in a while so... wanted to do it with you." Orange says as I just stare in awe, realizing how alive this world now felt to me.

With other worlds, they all seemed dull, lacking some sort of feeling to me that I couldn't pin down. But now I knew what it was.

The sense of aliveness in this world that had been in my world, before I left.

"It's... Beautiful, Orange Steve." I murmur and he comes over to hug me.

"Glad you like it Sabre!"