Lucky cleared her throat. “If you’re asking how to get one, it seems to be pretty automatic for most ponies. It happens while you’re doing something you’re good at, or something you like, or something you didn’t know you were good at. If you’re asking what they’re for, I have no idea. Ponies don’t have religion exactly, but they mystify lots of aspects of their lives. They don’t really examine some things, just taking it all for granted. That’s how cutie marks are. All the research I could do was to find some weird disease that gave you tons and tons of them at once, and that didn’t seem like it was still around.”