I started writing this thing in late April, and I began planning long before that. It would be an exaggeration to say this thing has consumed my life for half a year, but not by much. Suggesting that it's been at the forefront of my mind for the last three to four months is dead accurate.
So, hi! Thank you for reading. I hope Lost and Found was to your liking. Like every damn one of the stories I plan and write, it started as something different. It began with an idea of Applejack and Pinkie Pie lost in the middle of nowhere, and I started laying plans for two bedraggled ponies walking along the road, coming home to a Ponyville that had almost forgotten them.
I imagined Applejack and Pinkie Pie walking side by side towards four ponies who most certainly had not forgotten them. I had an intense desire to write a teary reunion and the buildup to that. To have Fluttershy take what turned out to be Rarity's role, of saying that the pain of loss was too great, that she almost just wanted to forget. To have Rainbow Dash's legs give out under her as she saw friends she had thought lost, return; failing to cope in the most delicious of ways.
Yeah, so that didn't happen.
It went from adventure to adventure-ship, from ApplePie to AppleShy ship to FlutterDash nonship to AppleShy with AppleShy ship or ApplePie or FlutterDash as the ship. Even after I started writing, things still changed. The TwiLestia bits weren't a sure thing until I was writing the second segment back home in Ponyville and Twilight and Celly both convinced me they were a thing, forcing me to go back and edit yet again.
I went from the adventure perspective alone to two and then to two and a half arenas. The fic moved from one point of view to two to three to... five? Brighthoof moved from a convenient guiding line, a link to the past, to drawing a loop through history, and all the other villains-that-aren't-really sprung up to fill a gap that was meant to belong to icy wastes and dead lands. Funny how that all works out, really.
This is the second time I've tried to write a certain fic. This is the second time I've "failed" to achieve my goal of writing a fic about isolation because I keep expanding on ideas with additional threads. I love both this fic and my previous adventure fic, Within and Without (which, if you at all enjoyed Lost and Found, you might want to check out) - but I also know I have to do this again.
Because the only thing more sane than writing two novel-length pony fics is writing three. Right? Here's to another of these damn fics after next season's end. I'll be over here, planning.
Now, if you're reading this, you are already my favorite person, so thank you for that. Most people will skip this "chapter", and many will leave off when they don't see any snacks down here. Let's talk shop, dear invested person for whom I feel a great deal of affection. If you would like to leave a comment, I would be very grateful. I also try to reply to all the mails I get at cloudyskieswrites@gmail.com; be it praise or critique, I answer them all. I won't lie. Feedback is part of why I write.
Okay, sorry. If we're going to be honest here, I have to confess I may have lied a little bit. You're almost my favorite. You'll have to compete with these:
Kits is a great fellow writer who's spent more time helping me with this fic than %insert_humorous_metaphor. Kits, I owe you an apple for every paragraph you've read, a bushel of apples for every hour spent discussing this story, and an apple tree for every time I've come to you with fears, worries or whines.
Sadly, this means that the rest of the world will have to do without apples. Without you, this story wouldn't be. And since most of you reading this are not Kits, you should click the blue name up there and go read his stories, because Kits writes stories that are worth reading.
And hey, Kits, if you want to read your own stories, that's fine too. Sometimes I think you should do that to remind yourself that you're awesome.
Cormacolindor.
Corma is a great non-writer who doesn't write stories that I can link to and endorse like I do with Kits. This may in part be because he spends all his time corresponding with me in mails assuaging my fears, providing excellent feedback that I need to hear even when some of it hurts, and generally being awesome.
Awesome is a full-time job, I'm coming to believe. Thank you for all your hard work, for all your reads and your re-reads. Thanks for helping make the iffy bits in doc 2 good. Not better, but from bad to good. Thank you for alerting me to the issues in doc 3. Thank you for everything between "once upon a time" and "happily ever after", really.
Just like Kits, the story would not be without this here pony.
Everypony Else.
There are so many other ponies who've been awesome. Aymee helped me conceptualize the cover. Volmise finished it. Couch Crusader was an immense help with the initial chapters, reading through with such care to detail, it greatly deproblematicized getting on to EqD. TAW and Tcher have cheered me on; I am sure that I can't single out everyone, so I don't want to try. Thank you.
That's it. Thank you. Next fic awaits.