Luna spent the next few weeks avoiding talking about her past. Her relationship with the human was new and fragile, and Luna didn't want to risk destroying it by revealing what a monster she was. Changing the subject wasn't all that difficult, Selene was extremely curious, but she was also happy to talk to Luna about humanity. In addition, as Luna regained her strength she was able to use more and more of her powers. Selene had consent questions about magic, and Luna was happy to answer them.
Luna hadn't had a friend in well over a thousand years, but she found that Selene was rapidly becoming one. She knew that honesty was an important foundation of friendship, and a part of her felt awful keeping the truth from Selene. There was going to come a point where she would have to talk about her past, but for now she would just keep pushing it off.
"Good morning Luna, did you sleep well?" Selene said without looking up from her breakfast.
Luna mumbled something as she stumbled in for breakfast. She had never been a morning pony and neither a thousand years on the moon nor being flung to places unknown had changed that.
Selene took another bite and then glanced upward at the pony. She quickly did her best to suppress a giggle, Luna's mane was a disaster. Hair pointed in every direction but down.
Luna sat down at the table, oblivious to Selene's laughter. The pitcher on the table floated over her glass and filled it with water. She took a sip while retrieving some jerky from the pile on the table. Ever since she had remembered the spell to deaden her sense of taste, meals hadn't been such a pain in the flank. All she had to do was close her eyes and pretend she was eating something else.
She finally noticed Selene's giggles.
"What is so funny?" she asked.
"Oh, uh, nothing," Selene said, glancing up at Luna's mane again before bursting into laughter.
Luna rolled her eyes and reached up to feel her head. Her mane stuck out in random directions. She summoned an ethereal mirror, to get a better look. Scowling, she quickly applied a bit of magic to get everything back into place. The mirror vanished back into non-existence and Luna just glared at Selene.
"Wow, I wish I could do that, I'd have to sit there with a brush for 20 minutes to fix hair that bad," Selene said with a hint of jealousy.
Luna smirked in response, stuck her tongue out and then turning back to her breakfast.
"Is that how you keep it blue? Do you dye it with magic?"
Luna nearly choked on her drink, sputtering she looked at Selene, her face twisted in horror.
"I DO NOT DYE MY MANE!" she shouted.
"Volume Luna, volume," she said holding her hands over her ears. "Are you telling me that your mane is naturally blue? What about your coat?"
"Of course, I would never dye my mane or my coat," Luna said still looking horrified.
"I'm sorry, I didn't meant to offend you, humans dye their hair all sorts of colors. Natural colors are pretty limited to variations of blond, brown, black and red, oh and as we get older white and grey."
"Some ponies mane's do grey or whiten with age, but it is almost unheard of for their coat to change color. Nopony would willingly change their natural colors, the very idea is offensive." Luna said.
"I didn't realize, it just seemed such an unnatural combination that I assumed it was dyed. I'm sorry."
"It is alright, you did not know. I am surprised to learn humans have such a limited spectrum. A ponies coat can be virtually any color. Manes have even more variety, it is not rare for a pony to have two or more colors in their mane. Not long before I arrived here, I saw a blue pegasus with a rainbow colored mane."
Selene laughed as she tried to picture Luna with a mane like that.
After breakfast they headed down to the airlock, ready to begin the daily chores. They opened the door to discover a thick blanket of freshly fallen snow. Luna grabbed the sled and they headed out to gather some ice.
They walked for a while before coming to a clearing, where a frozen lake provided most of Selene's water. She reached down into the bag to get the small laser cutter she used to carve out chunks of ice when suddenly something struck her in the side. Confused she stopped and turned around looking for the source of the impact. All she could see was snow, trees and more snow. Shrugging, she resumed her
"As I've mentioned before, the weather here pretty much goes from bad to worse. We're just a few weeks away from the end of what passes for fall here, before long it's going to get much cold..." Selene stopped mid-sentence and spun around, something had hit her in the back. She still couldn't see anything, but there was a clump of snow sticking to her coat, and she thought she heard a muffled giggle.
She turned to look at the pony just as she felt two more impacts. Luna wore a mask of perfect innocence, not even acknowledging that something was going on. Selene saw movement out of the corner of her eye and turned just in time to see a snowball, encased in a blue aurora, lift off the ground and accelerate towards her. Selene tried to raise her hands to block it, but she was too slow and the snowball struck her in the face.
"Luna!" Selene shouted.
Luna had collapsed into the snow, unable to contain the herself anymore. Laughter rang out over the snowy clearing as she rolled back and forth, hooves up in the air flailing wildly.
Selene bent down, picked up a big clump of snow, and dropped it right smack on to Luna's face. Luna rolled over and stood up, an evil grin on her face. Her horn lit up and a huge number of snowballs rose up from the ground. Selene turned around and started to run away, but it was far too late. Dozens of snowballs pelted her from every direction.
She stumbled into the treeline, desperate to escape the assault. She hid behind one of the larger trees, reached down and picked up some more snow. She peaked out but Luna was nowhere to be seen. How a blue pony could hide in the white landscape before her, she had no idea. Movement flashed in the corner of her eye, she whipped around but found nothing. She took off at a jog, weaving from tree to tree, in search for the blue menace. She saw more flashes of movement and heard menacing laughter come from multiple different directions at once.
"This isn't even remotely fair," she thought to herself.
"No magic!" she shouted.
She nearly had a heart attack as she heard a whisper in her ear.
"I don't need magic."
She spun around, only to see Luna hovering upside down directly behind her wings beating rapidly, but oddly without making a sound. Luna dropped a single large snowball onto Selene's head and then flipped right side up before landing deftly in the snow.
"I surrender!" Selene said, clearing the snow off of herself. "I forgot you can fly, I'm so jealous."
"Honestly, I do not fly as often as I'd like. I should start flying more often, my wings could use the exercise," Luna said, stretching them out to their fullest.
The two chatted for a while before they had to get back to work. Selene used the laser cutter to cut out large blocks of ice and Luna would lift them onto the sled. After they filled up the sled to the brim, they returned to the ship and added it to the tank that Selene had rigged up to melt it.
At the end of the day they retired to the lounge.
"Selene, what is that thing you are holding?"
"Oh this?" Selene asked, holding up a small device. "It's a tablet, remember I was telling you about computers the other day? Well this is a small portable one. It can hook into the ship's main computer and bring up all sorts of information. Right now I'm reading the maintenance schedule for the shuttle's generator. I'm going to have to do some work on it soon, but I have to power it down to do the work so I've been putting it off."
"So it's like a book?"
"Think of it more like a library, you can look up tons of different books right on here. If the information isn't stored locally, the tablet will pull it from the main computer. It's also got games on it, and it can play music and show videos."
"Do you have any books on human history or technology? I am often confused by what you say and I do not want to constantly pester you for knowledge."
"Oh, I don't mind, but yes actually. I've got a second one in my room, let me go grab it."
Selene jumped up and ran out the door, a minute later she returned with a second tablet.
"Let me show you how to use it."
Selene spent a few minutes going over the basic functions of the tablet. Then she pulled up a book that she had studied back when she was still in school.
"You said you wanted to learn about human history?" Selene asked.
"Indeed, that and more about your technology but I'd like to start with history."
Selene pulled up a chapter and then handed the tablet to Luna.
"This chapter covers the early 1700s, up though the industrial revolution. I think that's probably a good starting point based on what you've told me about pony technology."
Luna read for hours, as she found herself drawn into the her study of mankind. The very idea of a major civilization existing without the benefit of magic was alien to her, but Earth it seemed had not one, but many. The speed at which humans had advanced in the 19th century alone astonished her. What was so fascinating was that much of what she read was not new to her. In fact when reduced down to pure scientific knowledge, humans of the 1800s had some laughably outdated ideas. The difference between the two races was in how they reacted to something new. Humans would tinker and invent, while ponies would study, but there was far less application of that knowledge.
A good example was in the human's quest for flight. The average pegasus pony knew more about aerodynamics than any human she had read about, but to Luna's knowledge, no pony had ever attempted to build a flying machine. When 1/3 of the population could fly, there was no real need. The more she read, the more examples she found. Electric lights vs. enchanted crystals, telegrams vs. dragon mail and Luna hadn't even finished scratching the surface.
The rate of progression only increased as Luna move forward through history. She was shocked to discover that humanity had unlocked the power of the atom, in Equestria, Celestia and Luna alone held that knowledge, but had never thought to do anything with it apart from maintaining the heavens. Power generation wasn't needed and weaponizing it made little sense, as it paled in comparison to what they could accomplish with their own power. Magic it seemed, was acting like crutch, at least when it came to technological advancement.
Not that magic was bad, there were defiantly drawbacks to many of the humans technology. It was the potential combinations of the two that excited Luna. A simple enchantment could remove the pollution from a coal burning steam train. Advanced magic could be used to render nuclear waste inert.
Still, Luna had no real idea how far ponies had progressed during her banishment. While searching for the Elements, she had seen things that were unknown to her. She might find her way back only to discover that much of what she read was already known.
Of all that Luna read, computers fascinated her the most. The impact that they could have on Equestria was enormous. Better still, there were large similarities between spell-crafting and programming techniques. When she had the time, she promised herself that she would talk to Selene about getting access to the ship's computer so she could try her hoof at writing some simple programs.
A loud yawning interrupted Luna's reading. She looked over and saw Selene stretching.
"I'm going to head off to bed, don't stay up too late we've got a busy day tomorrow," Selene said.
"I shall not. Thank you for sharing this with me, it has been most illuminating."
"How far did you get?"
"I am currently reading about the impact of the internet on the early 2000s."
"Oh, so you're still a ways back then."
"Yes, when I first started reading about computers, I found myself sidetracked. I hope you do not mind, but I figured out how to switch to different books. I read several books about early computing before I found an article covering an introduction to programming, while reading that, the author made several references to something called a webcomic which I was able to find an archive of. The webcomic referenced a science fiction book series, and I read first three books," Luna said pausing to take a breath.
"After that, I started looking into early science fiction and found some more books to read. I found it fascinating how many fictional technologies eventually found their way into reality. Was it the authors works that inspired the invention, or was it merely natural progression. I still have many things to investigate. You did say this could show videos, there was television show that a number of people talked about, do you have Star Trek?"
Selene just stared at Luna for a moment, before leaning over to grab the tablet. She pulled up Luna's access history and her eyes widened. She had to scroll down through three pages of text before she got to the bottom of the list.
"You read all this in five hours?" she said, pointing at the screen.
"Yes, is something wrong with that?"
"You actually read it, not just skimmed through?"
Luna nodded, looking a bit confused.
"Luna, I'm a pretty fast reader and I don't think I could get through this in a week. Is freakish speed reading one of your magical pony powers?"
"My sister and I have always been quick learners," Luna said without thinking.
"You have a sister?" Selene asked.
"I uh..." Luna trailed off and her hears drooped down.
"I'm sorry Luna, I didn't mean to bring up any bad memories," Selene said.
"It is alright, you did not know."
"I don't know what happened, but I've noticed that you avoid talking about your past," Selene's face softened. "I don't know what happened but I don't want to force you into talking about it unless you want to."
"You noticed?" Luna asked, she pawed at the floor sadly.
"Of course I did," Selene walked over and sat down next to Luna. "You're my friend and friends notice those kind of things." She leaned over and gave Luna a hug.
Luna wasn't quite sure what to do, so she just sat there for a few moments. It was true, she had been avoiding talking about her past, but that would have to change someday. An empty feeling rose up in her stomach, when Selene learned about her, she feared that she would lose her only friend. She could feel tears beginning to build up in her eyes when Selene tightened her grip.
"Look Luna, I promise it will be OK. We can talk about it later if you want, I don't want to pressure you into anything."
Luna nodded slowly, and then lifted hear head up.
"Thank you."