//------------------------------//
// The Little Cleaning Cart 
// Story: Echos of Foalhood 
// by reflective vagrant 
//------------------------------//

"But don't you need to get  to the restaurant?"  Lightning Dust asked her mother the next morning.
Her mother gave a small giggle as she moved towards the door, gesturing Lightning Dust to follow.  "No.  I was finally able to get somepony else to run it a few days a week."
Lightning Dust's face grew puzzled as she walked out the door behind her mom.  "I thought you said Gold Bond expected it to be you running it full time."
They waved goodbye to her dad.  "Have fun you two," he called out, waving his good wing.
Her mom smiled and called back, "Don't work too hard."
"All these years and he still gets a kick out of being the maintenance pony,"  Lightning Dust said idly after her father pulled himself back into a second floor window.
"It gave him new purpose after his tour with the military was over.  It wasn't easy for somepony like him to find work."
"Yea.  I suppose not."  Lightning Dust responded while she started to stretch her wings idly while they waited at the curb.  She stopped herself and snapped her wings back to her side.  'Not here.  It's not safe.'
Her mom waved down a taxi cart on the road as it came by.  "As for the restaurant, I got lucky enough to refinance at a bank that didn't fear him.  So now I don't have to worry about Gold Bond sticking his nose into the restaurant's affairs anymore."
"That's good I guess."
"Oh yes, it is.  A little less money and a bit more headache, but more time where I need it."  Her mom stepped up into the taxi and adjusted the seats, settling in for the ride.  "Like spending the day at the mall with my daughter for once," she called more to the pony pulling the taxi than to Lightning Dust.
'About ten or so years late, but good,' Lightning Dust thought bitterly to herself then stepped into the taxi beside her mom.





Lightning Dust had a few things in tow with her saddlebag.  One side was filled with sweets and pastries to take back home carefully packed away and some little odds and ends that weren't easy to get out in the little town she'd been living in...  and her old shopping saddle bag to be demoted to dirty chore bag when she got back from her visit.  The other side was filled with her mom's things.
What they were currently arguing about was whether Lightning Dust needed a dress.
"Mom, I'm an athlete-" Lightning Dust said with a bland voice, staring at her mother skeptically, "-and have a steady job in the air.  I don't need to clog up my small closet with a dozen dresses that I would never use."
"Athlete or not, a lady should have at least one nice thing to wear.  What if..."
Lightning Dust looked down at the dress as her mother pleaded with her, only paying half attention.  She tested the material with a gentle tug and found it to 'delicate' for her taste.  'She's pushing you again,' her gut practically pulsated in warning.
"She just wants to give me something to have for special occasions,' her mind objected weakly.
'She'll use it to rope you into something.'
'No.  She won't.'
'Really?  How can you be sure?'
'...Like this.'
"Mom, I get it, aliright?  But if it's gonna be my dress then let me pick it out and pay for it."
Her mom gave her an odd look.
She shrank back bit as she spoke.  "I don't want something this-"  She paused and scanned the dress to find the right thing to say, ultimately looking at one of the tags.  "Hard to wash."
Her mother's disappointed eyes pierced at her.  "But I wouldn't mind some advice on them."


* * *


Later on, with the dress they finally decided on and the other items stowed away in her old room until she departed,  she sat at the table for lunch, waiting for her father to finish up the most recent odd job around the apartments and join them.
While getting the last bits of the meal together, her mom paused for a moment to muster the courage to ask, "I know this is going to sound bad, but could I ask you to consider something?"
Lightning Dust looked at her weird, then gave a flat face response.  "No. I'm not moving back in."
The two mares looked at each other with a tension in the air, but that tension quickly shattered when both of them burst into laughter.
"I know better than to ask that," Chocolate Dust called out as she tried to regain composure.
"But in all seriousness there is something else.  You've probably already seen the posters, asking for volunteers by the royal sisters to help the army in some big thing happening in the Appleloosa area.  They say that the volunteers won't be in any where near where the soldiers are needed, but they even have crystal ponies coming down from the Crystal Empire to supplement the normal guards to make sure they have enough troops down in Appleloosa."
With the timer on the counter going off, Chocolate Dust levitated the main dish from its cooling spot over the oven to the table.  As she set it down, she shook her head and continued.
"The entire thing stinks of some conflict brewing.  I don't like it.  He's thinking about joining the volunteers, but he's not a young stallion anymore.  He's going to get himself hurt, or worse."
When she lifted her head and looked at her daughter, the silence and blank stare she was receiving made her swallow a lump in her throat.
"I know you can empathize with him.  And, as much as I hate it, I know it would be a waste to even try to ask you not to go."
Lightning Dust waited for a moment but spoke up when her mom took too long to continue.
"But..?"
Chocolate Dust winced, sighed and made her request,  "But I was hoping maybe you can help him see some reason for staying?"
A moment of silence past before Lightning Dust looked down at the plates she had been setting out just a few minutes before.
'Do I have any right to ask dad to stay?  But, at the same time, I've broken mom's heart too much already.'
She adjusted the plate practically to the same spot, just to have something to focus her eyes on more intensely.
"I'll try to think of something."





In the time it took for Plasma Wave to get back, Lightning Dust had only the feeblest of reasons to get him to stay.
'If you leave, they will need a new maintenance pony for the apartments and you might not get your job back.'
'But I'll miss seeing your photos in the Manehattan Press.  You're getting so good at it now.
'I was hoping to visit more often.'
All of her reasons were feeble half truths at best, but she steeled herself to try anyway when she heard the tumbling of the doorknob, signaling he had come home.
As she went to meet him at the front door, he called out, "Chocolate Dust?  Honey?  I'll be just a minute more, I have to put some stuff away but I'll be right back in maybe five minutes."
He turned to her as she trotted up to him, giving her his attention.
"What's up slugger?"
She just about met his gaze, but found her eyes being drawn to a familiar object.
With him not getting a response from her, he noticed her looking back at the cart in the hallway, unable to break her shocked eyes away.
"Th-that cart."  Lightning Dust called out weakly.


There was the cart that had become such a symbol of Lightning Dust's torment.  The work she did with it wasn't bad, save for one or two incidences.  Nevertheless, it had been her constant companion throughout her troubled times working under her mother.  She had thought she had made peace with that part of her life.  With her mother getting her to learn to push through difficult times.  Despite it not being a bad job, or an unfair one, with her mother hating the idea of her being a wonder bolt with a passion, having to work under her was harshly associated with those feelings and that old tension.
Those years were key to her development as a hard worker and she looked back on them for the most part with a bittersweet taste of nostalgia.  Yet, while those skills were a part of her she'd never want to give up, at this exact moment the sight of that cart was bringing more of the feelings of her dreams being suppressed back to the surface than anything else.


"Oh this old thing?"  Plasma Wave gave a weary but genuine laugh, turning his head to look at the cart in the hall.  "Yea.  It's up here now.  Some biggets in the city counsel decided it was important enough for their reelections to pass a bill keeping any colt or filly from having proper work until they reach the age of a stallion or mare and 'focus on school' about two years back.  Considering how much more they can learn from having a part time job vs a little more time to play and not do the homework it was intended for, it was one of the stupidest decisions I've ever seen them pull.  But the end result was that we haven't had a use for the miniaturized cart in the restaurant.  I needed a replacement maintenance cart for the apartments, so we just moved this one up here to make more room at the restaurant."
By the time he had turned his head back, Lightning Dust was in tears.  Her lip was quivering and her body was starting to get the slightest case of the shakes.
Before Plasma Wave could react, he found his daughter flinging herself around him in a hug, sobbing and giving what sounded like incoherent apologies.
When her sobbing had dried up enough to hear what she was saying, all he could get out of her was, "I'll be fine."
Trying to comfort her in her embrace, he asked "What do you mean?  You'll be fine?"
"You want to join the volunteers and help the army in the Appleloosa troubles, right?"
Plasma Wave pulled his daughter out of the embrace to look her in the eyes.
"I..."
He looked at his wife ducking back out from the walkway to the kitchen with a look like she had a headache.
With a moment of thought, he put his head down and said, "I wanted to, yea.  But I was still weighing some stuff."
*Thud!* A somewhat loud sound came from the kitchen which both of them recognized and ignored.
Lightning Dust shook her head for a moment then looked back at her dad.  "Well I'll be fine, but you won't be if you let this last chance just slip by.  You'll just end up asking yourself 'what if?' for the rest of your life.   You once told me to follow my dreams because you could empathize from when yours had been taken away.  You have a chance to do it over now... In a way.  So go.  Go help them.  I'll be fine."
A moment passed as Plasma Wave's eyes started to water slightly.  With a nod, they went into the kitchen for dinner.
Just as they entered, Chocolate Dust's bruised forehead came back up from the edge of the sink where it would accommodate her horn, only for her to slam it back down in the same spot again.
With a huff, she let out an exasperated, "I should have just kept quiet over the whole thing..."