Lost and Found
Twilight stood and looked over the fruits of her labor. After several hours of painstaking work, she’d managed to completely organize all the books in the Golden Oak Library. Every genre, every author, and every title had been taken into account and she was sure she would never lose a book again. She stared over her collection and debated which book she felt like reading.
A large tome by an unknown author had piqued her interest when she was cleaning, and she knew exactly where to find it. Her hoof hovered along the books' bindings until she found it right where she’d put it. Just as she went to remove it from the shelf, a pink blur stormed through the front door.
“TWILIGHT!”
The desperate scream made Twilight jump and she turned to see Pinkie Pie looking frantically around the library. “Pinkie? What’s wrong?” Twilight asked, but Pinkie had already set into action. The crazy pink earth pony began tearing row after row of books from their shelves.
“I have to find it!” Pinkie Pie shouted, scanning the books' titles before throwing them to the floor. Twilight tried desperately to use her magic to organize the books as Pinkie scattered them.
“What? Find what?!” Twilight shouted, hoping to slow her friend’s rampage. Hurricane Pinkie continued to devastate the library faster than Twilight could keep up. At last, the purple unicorn simply levitated Pinkie into the air.
She flailed madly against her invisible restraints and began hyperventilating. “My—Have—Find—Lost—NOW!”
“Pinkie, just slow down and tell me what you’re looking for,” Twilight said, gently setting her friend down.
Pinkie Pie took several deep breaths before shouting out, “I LOST MY CUTIE MARK!”
Twilight’s jaw dropped as she looked to her friend’s flank. She saw it was devoid of the three balloons usually decorating it. “What? But how?” Twilight asked. “I’ve never heard of a pony losing their cutie mark!”
“Please! You have to help me find it!” Pinkie begged, grabbing hold of Twilight’s legs.
“Slow down, Pinkie!” Twilight said, breaking from the pink pony’s grasp. “Were you looking for a book in particular? Because I kinda had a system that would have made this—”
“I wasn’t looking for books, I was looking for my cutie mark!” Pinkie shouted.
Twilight rolled her eyes and brought her hoof to her face. “Pinkie, your cutie mark isn’t so much a physical thing as it is spiritual,” Twilight explained.
This time it was Pinkie’s turn to roll her eyes. “It is too physical! See!” Pinkie grabbed hold of Twilight’s flank and physically ripped the pointed star cutie mark off the unicorn.
“AHH! PINKIE!” Twilight screamed, though she felt no actual pain. The sheer shock of having her cutie mark removed put pain in her heart. Pinkie Pie slapped the cutie mark back on Twilight’s flank and looked at her friend with angry blue eyes.
“Will you help me or not?” Pinkie asked.
Twilight patted her cutie mark tenderly and then looked to her friend’s blank flank. “Okay, I’ll help, just let me do some research real fast!”
“No time!” Pinkie shouted, tearing more books off the shelves. Twilight levitated Pinkie off the ground once more and brought her to her face.
“We do this my way, okay?” Twilight asked, furrowing her brow. “I can’t believe I’m asking this, but where did you have your cutie mark last?”
Pinkie landed abruptly on the floor when Twilight released her without warning. “I had it this morning, right before breakfast!” Pinkie said, standing up.
“So have you checked all of Sugarcube Corner?”
“Yes! Even under the floorboards and in the walls!” Pinkie replied. Twilight could only imagine the mess she’d left the building in. “Oh, but not the ceiling!” Pinkie shouted, and she galloped out of the library.
“Pinkie! Wait!” Twilight shouted, galloping after Pinkie. As they came up on Sugarcube Corner, Twilight saw her imagination hadn’t been far off. The building was almost completely torn apart and there were piles of Pinkie’s belongings scattered on the ground. If Pinkie Pie’s cutie mark was really lost in this mess, it’ll take forever to find it.
Twilight hesitantly entered the building, fearing the structural integrity had been compromised to an unsafe degree. She could hear the noises of Pinkie burrowing through drywall and timber somewhere above her. The building creaked and Twilight cautiously climbed the stairs to Pinkie’s room.
“Pinkie, don’t you think this would be easier if you did it with just a little organization?” Twilight asked the empty room.
Pinkie’s head burst through the ceiling, pieces of plaster sticking out of her wild mane. “I don’t have time for orange-ization! This is an emergency!” And with that, she continued rummaging through the ceiling. Odd things like bouncy balls and telescopes fell from the cracks, adding to the piles below.
Twilight began levitating pieces of the mess around, already discouraged by the task at hoof. After a few hours she managed to get the floor of Pinkie Pie’s room completely clean, but she still didn’t find a cutie mark.
“Pinkie, I don’t think it’s here,” Twilight said. No response came from the walls or the ceiling. “Pinkie?” Twilight asked, looking around. She approached a hole in the wall and stuck her head inside. Something hard poked into her flank and she jumped in surprise.
“No! Twilight! You lost your cutie mark!” Pinkie Pie shouted, her hoof still against Twilight’s flank.
Twilight turned to her backside so fast her neck popped. Sure enough, her flanks were blank. “What? No! This is impossible!” the unicorn shouted, spinning around in circles.
“Hello?”
Pinkie and Twilight turned to see Mrs. Cake looking into the room. Her expression was fearful with a mixture of agitation; a look only Pinkie Pie could cause.
“Mrs. Cake! We lost our cutie marks!” Pinkie shouted, shoving her flank right into Mrs. Cake’s face. The earth pony mare pushed Pinkie’s tail out of her face angrily and looked to the ponies.
“Well, they’re probably in that mess downstairs!” she said angrily. “You know what we used to tell fillies and colts that didn’t clean their rooms? That they’d likely lose their cutie marks in the mess, and they would never find it.”
Twilight’s mother had said the same thing to her and Shining. But that’s just a mare’s tale to scare children into behaving, isn’t it? For lack of a better explanation, Twilight stormed past the enraged mare. She levitated pile after pile of objects and trash, her eyes scanning for her cutie mark. Pinkie Pie was a major hindrance as she added to the piles as she dug through others.
“They’re not here!” Pinkie shouted after going through the final collection of items. Twilight refused to believe it. She had her cutie mark when she’d entered the building, there’s no way it had just disappeared.
“This is impossible!” Twilight shouted. “Maybe…maybe I lost mine on the way here!” she tried to rationalize. It’s not like she’d looked at it after Pinkie Pie slapped it back on her.
While Twilight walked through the streets with her nose to the ground, Pinkie Pie hung up ‘missing’ posters all through the town. Twilight was so focused on scanning the ground, she wasn’t watching where she was going. A robed pony had stopped to read one of Pinkie’s signs and Twilight collided with the pedestrian.
“Oh, I’m sorry!” Twilight apologized quickly. The hood fell off the figure and she saw it was Zecora. The zebra looked from the poster in her hooves to Twilight’s flank.
“Twilight Sparkle with a flank that is blank?
Are you the victim of some cosmic prank?”
“I don’t know!” Twilight said frantically. “It just--disappeared!”
Pinkie Pie came running up to Zecora and let the posters fall from her mouth. “Have you seen these cutie marks? Last seen at Sugarcube Corner this morning!”
“You say your cutie marks are lost?
You must find them at any cost!”
“We’ve tried, but they aren’t anywhere!” Twilight shouted. She was beginning to sound as frantic as Pinkie Pie when she’d shown up to the library that morning. Zecora looked around and leaned in close to Twilight and Pinkie Pie.
“Things that are lost don’t disappear
There’s a place that they go, from what I hear
Deep within the dark Everfree
In a place few make it to see
There is a house, centuries old
Covered in moss and covered in mold
Where things that are lost now reside
If you’d like to go there, I’ll be your guide.”
Pinkie and Twilight lit up at finally having a lead, and graciously followed Zecora into the Everfree Forest. They trekked silently through the darkness, crossing rickety rope bridges and precarious ledges.
“Are we there yet?” Pinkie Pie asked anxiously. Zecora nodded and pushed aside a large leaf, exposing a clearing in the forest. In the center of the clearing was a house that easily could have been in every horror film ever. The shutters were falling off, thorns had grown around the windows, and the whole building seemed to emanate an otherworldly darkness.
“Let’s go, Pinkie,” Twilight said, grabbing the pink pony. Zecora stayed where she was and watched as the two ponies approached the house. Twilight climbed up the steps and went to knock on the front door. It swung inward on rusty hinges and she poked her head inside.
Pinkie, impatient as always, pushed Twilight in and bounced in after her. “Hello?” Pinkie shouted into the empty house. Her voice echoed off the walls and Twilight slapped her hoof over her mouth.
“Shhh!” Twilight shushed.
“Who’s there?!” a gruff voice shouted out from one of the dark rooms. An elderly stallion with a glass eye hobbled toward the two intruders.
Pinkie screamed against Twilight’s hoof so she clamped it tighter. “Um, hello,” Twilight said, trying to sound as friendly as possible. The stallion’s glass eye swiveled until it rested on the purple unicorn.
“Are you lost?” he asked, leaning his neck toward Twilight, similar to a turtle stretching out of its shell. “You must be, or you wouldn’t have wound up here.”
“No, we’re not lost,” Twilight explained, “We’re looking for some things have been lost. Can you help us?”
The old stallion scratched at his chin and looked to his uninvited guests. “Maybe I can, maybe I can’t,” he replied smugly. “What is it you’ve lost? A piece of jewelry? A book perhaps?”
“We’ve lost our cutie marks!” Pinkie blurted out, finally managing to remove Twilight’s hoof. The stallion cackled and his eye swiveled madly in its socket. Pinkie glared at him and he stopped laughing.
“I, err, may have found a few recently, but I don’t just give them away!” he said defensively. “If you can’t be careful enough not to lose something, why do you think you deserve it back?”
Twilight was searching for an answer when she happened to spy her cutie mark somewhere it shouldn’t be. “Hey!” Twilight shouted, pointing to the stallion’s flank. “That’s my cutie mark!”
The stallion turned to his flank and began cackling again. “Finders keepers!” he shouted.
“You can’t just take another pony’s cutie mark!” Pinkie Pie shouted, diving toward the stallion. With a flash of light, the stallion disappeared and Pinkie collided with a bookcase. The books tumbled off their shelves and covered the dazed earth pony.
“I’m Finder Keeper!” the stallion said, reappearing before Twilight. “And I’ll do as I please!”
“What about your cutie mark?” Twilight asked angrily. “Don’t you have your own?”
Finder Keeper looked away from her quickly. “Yes! Of course I do!” he shouted over-defensively.
“Yeah, well where is it?” Twilight asked, taking a step forward.
“I…I lost it,” he said quietly.
“What was that?”
“I said I lost it, okay?!”
Pinkie’s hoof shot out of the books and reached up for Finder Keeper’s flank. She plucked Twilight’s cutie mark off one side and it disappeared off the other. “Got it!” Pinkie shouted, jumping over to her friend.
Twilight slapped her cutie mark onto her flank and smiled. She looked back to Finder Keeper and saw he hadn’t moved. “So, you lost your cutie mark, so now you steal other ponies’?!”
“I didn’t steal anything!” Finder Keeper shouted. “I find them. I find lots of things.” He trudged out of the room and indicated for them to follow him.
“Well did you find my cutie mark?” Pinkie Pie asked impatiently. She stopped bouncing the second she set hoof into the room she’d been led. The room was easily ten times the size of the entire house, and it was filled with boxes, chests, and piles of stuff.
“Is everything here lost?” Twilight asked in amazement.
“Well, it’s found now,” Finder Keeper replied sadly. “Ponies lose things and they all end up here. I just sort through them all, hoping I find my own cutie mark.”
“Where do you keep the cutie marks?” Pinkie Pie asked, looking around frantically. The stallion held up his hoof and indicated to a silver filing cabinet. Pinkie flung it open and began flipping through pages (yes, pages) of cutie marks. They’d all been set against sheets of paper for easy filing. Right in front was her three balloon cutie mark and she eagerly smacked it onto her flank.
“Good, you’ve got it, now get going,” Finder Keeper said angrily. They just looked to the upset stallion and then to his blank flank.
“If you don’t mind me asking, how did you lose your cutie mark?” Twilight asked.
“Probably the same way you two lost yours. You had a mess, didn’t you?” Finder Keeper asked. The ponies nodded and he just laughed. “Yeah, I figured. See, I was always real good at finding stuff folks lost, and it turned out to be my special talent. I was so happy the day my cutie mark appeared.
I knew what I was meant to do, so I began finding as many lost things as I could. The problem was, not everything that was lost wanted to be found. After a while, I ended up with more stuff than I knew what to do with. There were piles, great big piles, of toys, and coins, and gum wrappers, and you name it.
One day, I lost my cutie mark in the mess. I haven’t seen it since.”
“That’s so sad!” Pinkie said, blowing her nose on a tissue.
“So your cutie mark is lost in a pile of stuff that is lost?” Twilight asked, looking around at the mess of the room.
“Where does lost lost stuff go?” Pinkie asked.
“I haven’t figured that out yet!” Finder Keeper shouted.
“Well, does everything lost end up here?” Twilight asked.
Finder Keeper slammed the filing cabinet closed after flipping through the cutie marks. “Yes, everything comes here, but there may be another place it goes when it gets lost in here!” he shouted.
“My head hurts,” Pinkie said.
“But what if it’s in here somewhere?” Twilight asked, levitating a few stray cutie marks from an unsorted pile. “We can help you.”
“No!” Finder Keeper said, turning away from the unicorn. “If I haven’t found it, it isn’t here!”
“But what if it is? Sometimes an extra set of eyes can really help…”
Twilight trailed off after Finder Keeper turned to look at her, his glass eye looking slightly to her left.
“Sorry.”
“What does it look like?” Pinkie Pie asked, holding up several cutie marks she’d taken from another pile.
“A magnifying glass, but you’ll never find it!” he replied, crossing his forearms. Pinkie removed her cutie mark and set it atop the filing cabinet. She took a deep breath of air and dove head first into a pile of unsorted garbage.
Twilight took the more cautious approach and levitated the items so she may look at them individually. “Aside from the cutie marks, don’t you have a system of organization?” she asked.
“Sorted stuff,” Finder Keeper said, indicating to a small pile. He then pointed to a mountain of lost items, “Unsorted stuff.”
“Oh,” Twilight said, letting everything in her magic just fall to the floor. “I’ll see if I can’t set something up.”
Twilight and Pinkie spent hours organizing the collection of lost items. Twilight’s obsessive compulsive tendencies made the work easier as more categories were added. Finder Keeper simply watched as the two ponies worked. Eventually, the floor started to clear and the piles started to shrink.
“Hey, I remember this!” Finder Keeper said, stepping toward Twilight and levitating a snow globe out of a pile. “This showed up when I first found this place, but I thought I lost it!”
“See,” Twilight smiled, “your cutie mark could still be here!”
“Found it!” Pinkie shouted triumphantly. Finder and Twilight turned to the earth pony and saw her holding up a tuba.
“Pinkie, that’s a tuba,” Twilight said flatly.
“It’s not just any tuba! It’s the tuba my grandma lost when she was a filly! And then she became a rock farmer,” Pinkie said sadly. Her expression quickly changed to joy and she put the tuba around herself. She breathed in deeply and played a single note on the tuba. Something shot from the bell of the instrument and struck Finder Keeper right in the face.
“Oh my gosh! Are you okay?” Twilight asked, looking down at the old stallion. Right on his good eye was a magnifying glass, and he peered through it. Twilight tenderly peeled it off the stallion and held it up for him to look at.
“It can’t be!” he said, grabbing the cutie mark. “It is!”
“Good work, Pinkie!” Twilight shouted. Pinkie replied with another low note on the tuba.
“I’ve waited years for this moment!” Finder Keeper said, placing the cutie mark on his flank where it belonged. It stuck to his fur and glowed brightly as the other side appeared as well. “Thank you! Thank you!”
The stallion embraced Twilight and she felt him sobbing into her shoulder. She patted his back as he cried tears of joy. The moment quickly passed and the stallion composed himself.
“Well, I have to thank you,” he began, but Twilight held up her hoof.
“There’s no need,” she smiled. Finder Keeper looked at her with a smile and then scowled.
“You wouldn’t have been here if you hadn’t been so careless with your own cutie mark, now get off my lawn, and all that jazz!” Finder Keeper winked his good eye at Twilight so she knew he was just kidding.
“Yes, Mr. Keeper,” she said with a nod. “Come on, Pinkie!”
Pinkie Pie reattached her cutie mark and bounced to the beat of the song she was playing on the tuba. Finder Keeper waved to them as they left, and went to finish organizing the lost things. Perhaps he’d try returning a few like he’d done all those years before. As for Pinkie and Twilight, they vowed to be more careful with their belongings, and Twilight offered to help Pinkie stay more organized. Of course, that was a waste of time.