Heroes of Dreamland, Book 6: Kirby and the Fountain's Fate (OLD)

We're Ba-ack!!!

Sakura's POV:

The dream I was having fades out of remembrance as morning in the real world tries to pull me back out of sleep.

Well, not really the 'real world tries' so much as 'my younger brothers try' to pull me back, if we're being honest here.

"S'kura... Wake up, S'kura," someone giggles in my ear as they shake me.

Still mostly asleep and wondering if I'm still dreaming, I murmur back "Mmm?" as I try to blink my eyes open. Hey, I never claimed to be good at waking up without warning, did I?

"Come on, Sakura, wake up!" another voice joins the first one, also giggling, as both puffballs begin to shake me.

Starting to laugh myself, I finally yawn and push myself up into a sitting position. "All right, all right, I'm up." After hesitating a second and pretending to stretch the wings from my cape with a yawn, I suddenly catch both of the cream puffs that just woke me up with them, folding them close to me and starting to tickle them with my feathers. The giggling intensifies for a moment until I quit tickling them and instead nuzzle both of them affectionately while now using my wings to hug them to me.

As you've probably guessed by now, these two are my little brothers, Kirby and Shadow Kirby. The three of us have been staying here at my mom's house in Nintendo City with my mom and my two sisters for a couple of months now. My other little brother, Bandana Dee, has been staying on the Lor Starcutter with my friend Magolor and flying around the Galaxy helping him deliver stuff to various places, and the one-and-only Meta Knight has been staying at the castle and studying all of the books there in the castle's huge library.

Ever since the Final Battle took place a couple of months ago, everything has actually been really calm and peaceful. ODURAF was disbanded as soon as we found homes for all of the time-traveled kiddos, since here in Nintendo World there's not really a need for an undercover rescue force anymore. Geo, Terra, and their three kids Butterfly, Cricket, and Lavender have recently moved to Star World, just like my mom and sisters will be doing any day now.

Sadly, I still haven't seen Star World even once since the day I saw Meta off to join the army years ago- centuries ago for him, actually. He keeps promising that we'll go spend a day there together someday soon, but there just hasn't been time yet. He's either been busy helping out with the reconstruction, or I've been busy helping my mom pack up everything out of her shop, or, sometimes, we're both busy at once. Really, though, I have to admit that I'm really looking forward to seeing River Village again. Next to Dreamland, that's the place that I most think of as being 'home.'

Now, I kiss the two wriggling younger Star Warriors on top of their heads and let them go. Laughing and chatting excitedly, they run out of the room, probably going to go find some breakfast. Then, I grin as I look around the room. This place also really feels like home to me, although that's more because of the people here than anything else.

The room is a little bit small, although it's actually just a small section of a larger room. My mother's apartment is built to be like an old-fashioned house of the Ancients, with sliding paper walls, low-to-the-floor tables, rectangular prism-shaped paper lamps in the corners, and sliding windows with flower-boxes just outside filled (at the moment) with mums and sunflowers.

There's two big windows on all four of the walls, two of which are in here, the little room that I share with my sister Ame. Kawa and Mom share a room, and so do Shadow and Kirby. Every morning, we slide the walls out of the way, turning the four small rooms (one of which is the kitchen) into one big room again. The beds are really soft blanket rolls that we roll out on the floor at night and roll back up and put away in a cabinet inside the wall during the day.