Luna poked at the little glowing screen. “What is the name of this device?”
Celestia looked over her sister's shoulder. “It's a pPad. Be delicate.”
Luna nodded in satisfaction and let her sister go back to work. That was the only question she ever had to ask, and Celestia suppressed a smile as she pored through pages of usury reform proposals. Luna had hardly changed; she might interpret a smile to be condescension.
She poked at it. The device had no visible generator, and a small series of numbers seemed to indicate a length of time: 3d 9h 49m. She watched the clock on the wall.
The final number went down only a few seconds after the clock ticked the minute; she nodded with satisfaction and inspected the back of the case. The information given didn't make a great deal of sense to her, but the units were recognisable; the pegasi, she recalled, called it 'cloud storm potential'.
“An electromagnetic capacitor,” she whispered, poking at it. “Ingenious.”
“Isn't it?” Celestia didn't even hide her grin; Luna was too busy to see it, and her mane camouflaged it well.
She went back to poking at the device; poking at the symbols, she noted, made objects magnify from the centre of the thing's display. Touching the button inscribed with a hollow square dismissed it. Her lip trembled as she tried to hide her excitement. “Electroluminescent and touch-sensitive.”
“Mm-hmm?”
She blinked a bit and peered closer; she could see white words underneath the symbols. She poked at 'compass', and a facsimile of a compass appeared before her. Her horn glowed slightly. “Uses the inherent Aristrottal attraction of its capacitance to determine direction.”
“Is that it?” Celestia patted her sister on the back. “I took sociology, remember?”
She knew the words shouldn't have been said as soon as they came. Luna didn't flinch. “The University of Canterlot was founded five hundred and seventy-three years ago. Sociology was recognised as a valid course of academic study one hundred and seventy years ago. No, I do not remember.”
Celestia looked back to her papers. They both were silent, and she went back to work.
Luna pressed the square-marked button; the compass disappeared. Another press on a similar button revealed a white object with a little grey bar above it, itself containing a smaller white bar.
“What is the name of this device?”
“A web browser.”
She pushed about at the blank screen; hitting the thing brought up a bar. “What is the name of this device?”
“A keyboard. You press—”
Luna's hoof went into her sister's mouth, stifling her sentence; the bearer of the sun spit it out, laughing. “Alright, alright. I'll be good.”
She looked back down at it and pressed a few keys; her excitement did not diminish as she undertook the banalities of typing. The list of items that had highlighted themselves on the display made her tilt her head slightly, and she poked at the first bright, blue bit of text.
A portrait of her appeared to the right, the listed text replaced by a segmented, paragraphed essay on her. Her cheeks reddened a bit, and she turned to her sister once more.
“What is the name of this device?”
“You can ask questions other than 'what is the name of this device', you know.”
Luna shook her head, glanced at her and looked back at her papers. “That is the only question for which I have ever had use.”
She looked back to her papers. “Luna, modern technology is impossibly abstract. You won't ever understand the infrastructure of the Internet from its functions. It takes years of study for most ordinary p—”
Her voice had deepened somewhat. “Sayest thou that I am but an ordinary pony?”
Celestia sighed. “I would like it if you wouldn't try to be stubborn when you require help.”
“And I would like very much, sister, not to be treated as though I were a foal and thrown into the care of a tutor. What is the name of this device?”
Celestia did not raise her voice or her head. “It's been a thousand years. This isn't the same Equestria you left.”
“How darest thou?” She rose, now, and stepped forwards. “This land for which I fought a hundred times before, a thousand, for which I rise the beauteous moon, for which I have accomplished such feats of intellect so that the dirt breathes by me—how darest thou say that this land is no longer mine?”
“I will not lie to you, Luna. The land still is yours. Its people are not, and so its technology is not. You did not make this. You did not aid in its construction. Your knowledge is outmoded.” Luna saw that her sister's eyes were focused upon her papers, but she could not see them past her mane.
Luna set the pPad aside and brought herself closer, her hoof grabbing at Celestia's chin and forcing her eyes to meet hers. “Facest me when thou seekest to cast upon my name those petty canards!” she shouted, and hesitated as she saw that her sister's eyes had the trace of tears in them.
“Nopony spoke like that a thousand years ago.” She shook her head free and kept her voice calm, looking at the ceiling. Her next breath was deep. “You're not somepony who got into a time machine, Luna. You've been banished for a thousand years. You've spent those thousand years in isolation thinking of the past and immersing yourself in its glory.”
She fumed, her hesitation gone. “I have always been looking forwards! Always! The moon did not change that! Nothing will ever change that! You will not change that, sister!”
“Time has,” she said, turning wearily back.
Luna looked at her incredulously for a while, blinking.
Then she closed her eyes and she spoke. “I am not a pegasus, sister. I am an alicorn. And if I may control the rising of the moon and the stars, I would like to think that I have the smallest bit of control over what I choose to learn and that little ability to learn that which is not arbitrary. I would like very much to think that I have some control over my life—that I am not a piece in a museum to be fed varnish!”
Celestia shook her head and looked back at her papers. “Of course, sister.”
They sat quietly for a while.
Luna picked the pPad back up and brought it up to Celestia's eyes. “What is the name of this device?”
She looked over it. “It's Ponypedia.”
She did not elaborate.
Luna nodded in satisfaction and went back to figuring it out; that was the only question she ever had to ask.