//------------------------------//
// Of Idols and Dreams 
// Story: Echos of Foalhood 
// by reflective vagrant 
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Lightning Dust lay in the bed of her old bedroom turned guest room.  She looked around to try to distract herself from her thoughts.
Most of the little things she had left behind had been put in the closet for storage if she ever wanted them.  The walls had the posters removed and the bed had a different set of sheets.  Otherwise, the room was left about the same save the scuff marks on the walls and door that her little cousins had made in her absence.  It was like they had touched it just enough to keep her things safe and make it useable.  Like they changed no more than they needed to.
Her stomach growled from not eating much at dinner, in spite of her dad barely holding back the desire to put the food on her plate himself.  She laid back and closed her eyes as her efforts to distract herself began to fail.
'You know you insulted them by not eating much.  They know you have more of an appetite than that,' her mind told her.
'Let them be insulted.  You shouldn't have eaten anything,' her gut snapped at her like an angry brat.  'You know that-'
Lightning Dust interrupted her argument with herself with a quiet huff.  With her eyes still shut, her expression turned skeptical.  'Really?' she thought to herself.
'OK, OK.  So they wouldn't do it with a few bites, but you still were right to not get too comfortable.'
She opened her eyes a little to look up at the head of her bed, furrowing her brows more in confusion than frustration.  "...For now at least."
She inhaled sharply and held her breath just long enough for the stress from that moment's inner argument to gather in it.  With the gut feeling finally going back to its place in the back of her mind, being settled for the moment, she exhaled.
Opening her eyes more fully as the stress relieved itself, her gaze wandered towards the ceiling above the bed only to be drawn directly to an old object.   There, inconspicuously placed at a corner of the ceiling where it was expertly hidden from the entrance but in full view of the bed's occupant, was an old poster of hers left untouched.  Memories flooded her mind.





Little filly Lightning Dust looked onward in anticipation from her perch on her father's back. Her mom was stuck at work, again, but she didn't really like flying anyway.   With Lightning Dust's little brother on the way, her mom was trying to get the restaurant adjusted to have some extra help when her tummy started growing and became too big to handle the restaurant.
"Fillies and gentle colts of Manehattan!  I am proud to present to you, for your spectating pleasure, the Wonderbolts aerial show!"
With that, Lightning Dust forgot her troubles and cheered the evening away.  Lightning Dust's Aunt zipped across the sky.  Towards the end of the performance, Lightning Dust wiggled in excitement, knowing what the finale was going to be.
With the moon moving upwards into the sky right as the sun was setting, The Wonderbolts coordinated with the fireworks experts and moved to the far end of the field where none of the stands were.  The Wonderbolts  twirled around as if raising the moon in an invisible vortex and fighting the flux of fireworks that looked as if they were set to move the moon off course, ending  in a final false strike of the fireworks being "deflected" by the up and coming rookies, into the clouds above.   The barely held together clouds burst open in a shower of sparkles, revealing the night sky of the eastern edge of the city in an awe inspiring shower of sparkles and real starlight.  Starlight painstakingly enhanced by Princess Celestia's magics, despite her lack of natural attunement to night, just for this occasion.
The moment burned into the back of Lightning Dust's mind. 'I want to be up there someday.  Following her up there as her wingpony and making her proud.'
"I still think it would be cooler if they could do that at the Summer Sun Celebration,"  A pegasus colt callously commented nearby.
Lightning Dust's cheeks puffed out as she held her retort back over it being Princess Luna's birthday that so few knew about that they generally didn't even care.  But she cared.  Her aunt cared too.  Her aunt also made her promise to not start a fight over it and just be happy the show happened.
Getting off her dad's back, her dad looked at her looking out at the crowd with a concerned face.  He then grew a quick smirk.
"Come on, they have custom posters of the athletes that performed tonight.  And I'm pretty sure they are saving a glow in the dark one of Spitfire for a special filly."
With a simple smile, Lightning Dust forgot about the colt and trotted up to his side.
"Why didn't you join up back when you had both wings, daddy?  Mom says you were a good flyer back then too."
He  gave a pained smile, then responded as they walked off.
"I'd have been happy to join if I thought it was right.  I'd want to put my life on the line to protect others.  But I had other skills that were needed elsewhere.  So I became an engineer in the technology development branch instead.  By the time my initial contract was up, my wing was gone."
Lightning Dust was looking at the different merchandise booths coming up, showing acrobatics for the rookies and acts of bravery in danger that different Wonderbolt veterans had performed in their careers.
"But you'd still go if they wanted you, right?"
He gave a pained laugh then looked at her with admiration.  "Once I knew my family would be OK without me, in a heartbeat, Lightning Dust.  In a heartbeat."


* * *


Years later,  Lightning Dust was lying on her bed in a huff of anger, having suffered another argument with her mom.  This time she had refused to sign her papers to join the Wonderbolt academy.
With a knock on her door, she yelled out, "Just go away and stop controlling my life, mom!"
The door opened and Lightning Dust threw her pillow at it.
"Easy there, slugger.  It's me,"  her dad responded after ducking under the thrown pillow.
Lightning Dust sat up on her bed away from the door, and her dad.  "So what if it's you instead of mom?  You're just here because she asked you to get me to see things her way.  It wouldn't be the first time."
Plasma Wave went around the bed and sat next to the young mare.
"Well you're half right.  She did ask me to do that, but that's not what I'm here for."
Lightning Dust jumped off her bed and started hovering in front of her father, steadily rising upward more and more as she got off into a rant.
"Then what are you here for?  To get me to go to work in mom's kitchen?  To have me improve my grades in school instead of going to the gym?  A little late for that one, dad.  Already graduated.  Maybe you want to go to the park where I can watch everypony else fly because you're afraid the South Wings will try to recruit me if they see me in the air?  Why can't you guys understand!?  I!  Am!  A!  Flyer!  Just like-!"
Lightning Dust bumped into the ceiling, bumping one of the corners of her poster, crinkling the edge and tearing the tape holding it up along one corner.  When she landed and looked up, she saw one of the corners slightly crumpled and dangling from busted tape.
Plasma Wave gave her a stern glare and said, "If you will let me get a word in, I'll tell you."
Lightning Dust got back on the bed and sat there, suddenly mute.
Plasma Wave brought out a piece of paper.
"This is the application you wanted us to sign, right?  The one that would let you go to the academy and bypass going to the normal air force just to have a chance of getting referred into the Wonderbolts?"
When she tried to look away, he gestured to the line at the bottom.
"Well I have done some thinking, and I've decided to support you on this."
Turning her head back to the paper, Lightning Dust looked down and saw her father's signature on the line.
Her eyebrows went up for a moment, but shot right back down with a deeper scowl.
"Doesn't matter.  I still need Mom's signature too, and there's no way she's going to give it."
Plasma Wave smirked as his daughter said this.  "Again, you're half right.  There is no way she'd sign it."
He folded the application back up and put it in the envelope it came in.
"But I said I was going to support you on this and that doesn't stop at just a signature.  So I called your aunt from the building's office and found out that you actually don't have to have both of us sign it.  Just one signature meets minimum requirement."
Lightning Dust looked at her dad in shock.
He brought her in to a hug, which she resisted for a moment, but thought better than angering the pony that just found her a loophole and sat there with a desire for the mushy feel good hug to be over.
"My dreams of serving were dashed away before you were born.  I can see that you take after me and your aunt in your desire to be out there, doing your best.  But your mom is so worried about your safety that she has practically imprisoned you in chains of silk since..."
Tears rolled down both of their eyes as they hugged again, this time both participating in the hug earnestly.  "Since your little brother died," he finished.
Sobering up a good minute later, he continued.
"My dreams were taken from me, but the streets here in Manehattan aren't really that much safer for a pegasus than being in the service.  Your mother might not get that, not for real, but I'll be dammed to Tartarus if I just sit idly by and watch my daughter's dreams be dashed away too."
With this, he scooted the envelope containing the signed application to her.
"So if you can finish filling it out and sign at the bottom, I'll sneak it out to-"  He winked,  "-Aunt Campfire and she'll do her best to make sure the Wonderbolts accept it without your mom's signature."






Even the special tape Lightning Dust had to hold the poster up without damaging it was left unmoved, save one corner that had a little bit more tape added for reinforcement.  A part of her wanted to smile but the rest of her could only turn over in her bed, chewing on this until sleep finally took her.