Stella stared down still with eyes as sunken as before, without moving. Trixie's uncovered eyes were on her, without really seeing her, the unicorn still only perceiving her in ways other than sight. "I should have known you were close," Stella said. "I was distracted. I was angry at Twilight and busy with taking care of her. But we're not that close to Manehattan. Not close enough to get there as quickly as we did. That was you we passed over, wasn't it? Your training grounds, your distortion spell. That's how we ended up there."
There was no discernable emotion in Trixie's eyes as she stared vaguely towards Stella. They were open, slightly more than normal, apparently not bothered by the sunlight, not angled or darkened or warped. Her expression too was neutral, calm, relaxed muscles and lips at rest. Her ears flicked instinctually around as the wind passed her by, but she did not move. Her mane and tail hung barely moved by the breeze, a little ruffled by what she'd just gone through. "It was," she said. She was quiet, but in the relative silence of their place in the sky Stella did not struggle to hear her.
The reddened whirlwind beneath Trixie's platform, though still there, had diminished in intensity and fully come to a halt in upwards motion, and was lazily swirling stationary below the unicorn. Stella smiled a little as she heard that, though the emotion of her expression did not reach into her eyes. "I lied before," she said, as quietly as Trixie had. "I had an idea of what you might be doing. Now I'm not sure yet, but I think it's likely enough for me to take a chance on it. You might think that knowing doesn't mean I have a solution yet. Maybe I have one. I'm not going to tell you."
"I'm going to wait and see, then," Trixie said. She looked straight ahead, averting her eyes from where Stella was, resting her neck. "I can't tell how you look. I can't tell where your voice is coming from, and I can't tell anything about you from it the way I hear it. But I think you're tired. I saw some of what you did with Twilight, and you're not pushing as hard against me. I think it's because you don't have it in you right now."
Stella was still impassive as Trixie lit her horn bright crimson, and the unicorn continued, "I don't actually know if I can beat you. I'm not sure if that's part of the plan. I'm not sure what the plan is at this point, honestly. But if you're really tired out, then maybe I can try." Magic kept building in her horn, and circling around her in barely visible flares of condensing red energy. It was like watching the leaves occasionally picked up by otherwise invisible currents of wind spinning in place, though if any leaves had been there they would have caught fire.