As far as she was concerned, the symbol just happened to exist on her flank. A point of pride, sure, and something she could look at and think, We, Us, but Flynn had seen much more in it. Too much, perhaps. She remembers how Ophelia had described it with a certain nonchalance—“At least this is what Flynn thinks”—and those times in the safehouse when Flynn would get this Look in his eye, this sort of excitement as he’d trot around and around to release the energy his million words a minute couldn’t.
“Purpose,” she’d repeated once, and had waited for Flynn to catch up to the outside of his mind.
“Yeah, man!” He’d looked so radiant against the stark white of the safehouse. “Like—out in the real world, ponies like me have these funky little things called cutie marks on our flanks.” (She’d seen his many times over the cycles—stylized circuitry framing what he called a D-pad.) “They’re something we receive only when we’ve discovered our purpose in life.”
He’d grinned, then, and pointed at her symbol. “But you—you’ve had yours since you were born. And that’s gotta mean something.”
She’d agreed on that, at least, and would do so for hundreds of cycles more. But the purpose that Flynn had believed her symbol meant felt too… vague. Change the world. Make it better. Solve the eternal problems of ponykind and guide us, Quorra. It was difficult to believe that a simple image could communicate an impossible mission—or that it was somehow her calling to fulfill. As much as she’d loved him, she could never truly accept that her coincidence was as significant as his own. It worked better, she’d always thought, as a thread connecting her to We, Us. It worked better as a monument.