The Princess shakes her regal head in a gesture of sardonic bemusement. Yet even as the motion sets her mane swirling in lambent cosmic cascades, you sense a subtle thawing—an intangible slackening of the brittle tensions that previously gripped her like iron shackles. A glimmer of your bygone camaraderie, perhaps, pushing forth through the cracks in her jaded veneer like the first vibrant petals of springtime after an endless winter's bitter dreaming.