Daily Card Redesign #45: Angelic Blessing

Daily Card Redesign is a daily Magic: The Gathering design exercise where I randomly choose a card for the scenario of it being killed late during its own set's development, and I design a replacement card that uses the same art, is the same color, is the same rarity, and has a name that, alphabetically, keeps it within the same collector number for the set.

One of my favorite pieces of Magic: The Gathering art. Look, a hummingbird! And an Elf Angel?

Redesign:

I wanted to convey the blessings that an Angel can give, as what seems to be happening in the art. I can't grant protection, because the Portal set doesn't allow that. There's only one card that prevents damage in the set, and I consider that an exception, so I didn't go for preventing damage. Since there are a couple white cards in the set that can't be blocked under certain conditions (whether it's not being able to be blocked by red/black creatures or by creatures with two or more power), I thought I would go with that route.

Since it's a conditional unblockability, I thought it wasn't stepping on the toes of being blue too much. I named it "Angel's Sympathy" to reflect the fact that the Angel identifies with the hummingbird because it flies, too. And an Angel giving sympathy means that the hummingbird, or the creature with flying you choose, won't need to worry about getting hurt - and doesn't get tired. This is why it gains vigilance (besides it being something that white does).

I don't even understand why the card originally granted flying with the art the way it is. Couldn't the hummingbird fly before?