Captivity Narrative of Cassia and Clove day 2-2

They told for the two of us to become garbage collectors. We would be stationed underneath Castille Bridge between the J. Lightfoot War Cemetery and the natural history museum. This would be our first task as normal people. A dark bridge would hide our criminal faces from the jeering public. We were safe in the cold. We nodded in agreement to the task, and were immediately taken to the bridge to be put to work. The first piece of litter we found was a wrapper to a Gommish Bar. Something normal, but it did make us crave such a bar, reminding us of our starving youth. We picked it up anyway with our chopsticks and put it away in our trash bag. We continued to pick up Gommish Bar wrappers that we soon discovered formed a trail leading to one litterer. We looked up at him, and the fatty ran off screaming.
We’d been seen! We should have simply informed our superiors to they could have duly noted what happened with the litter trail, but now he might call on the royals to see us and deal with us. Cassia wanted to get back into hiding so she could avoid anyone else. I instead wanted to deal with the consequences, and tell them that I was innocent of anything other than scaring this guy away after he was littering. I returned to cleaning, and began to whistle while I worked. When my bag was full, I then saw Sally looking over me from her carriage. She didn’t seem to notice me in particular, but I still felt uneasy at her presence. I told Cassia that she was here, and she looked up at her. Sally then finally noticed us, and she… waved.
Were we pardoned? Certainly, she pardoned us as minions of Robotnik, but as people? I wasn’t sure. I wanted to leave the stigma of a hated war criminal behind desperately. I just wanted to be a person again. So I went back to working and continued to pick up my trash. It was as if we were battling others of our kind to the death to crawl out of a pile of the doomed. Robotnik’s minions were society’s trash.
The trash of the town, as we now were, and fighting the others was the only way to crawl out of the heap. We had to stand tall as sisters, sisters reformed from Robotnik. And we had to start humbly.
Sweep, grab, peck, grab, sweep. It was a simple cycle. But it was a very fun cycle indeed. We cleaned up the whole lot before the night rose above us and the warden returned. “Impressive work, girls.” We smiled. “Now, you must get to your night job as cashiers in the shop. I’ll lead you there.”