Princess Adila has historically been a bad loser - but it's only now, here, where she's properly able to perceive why that was the case. She hadn't been frustrated at her opponent - she'd been frustrated at [i]herself[/i] and taken it out in dramatic sulks. But since she was specifically not playing to win here she could perceive things entirely differently. She could see the flaws in her play not as humiliating admissions of weakness but as things to work on - things she already had ideas about how to work on.

And it also helped that she was pretty sure that never in her life she'd be able to beat Alina. Knowing that she'd failed when it mattered, that she'd lost things she could have won - that was stress city and the reason why she flunked out of so many hobbies. Knowing that there was no way she was even going to land a tail touch on Princess Alina freed her from all of that. It was similar to hypnotism, similar to the state she fell into when close with Dandy - a compliant freedom in the face of mastery. 

So she takes the game at its own rate, on its own terms, free from ego. She learns that despite her speed, her size makes it impossible to move while holding the ball without getting tagged - she has ideas about that too, but they're long term. Instead she's best served attempting to intercept passes and long throws with her wings and then immediately hand them off to team members. The only times she takes it on herself to try to score are when her team is entirely out of position, and in those cases she goes for long range shots. She's losing, but every action is an experiment, and every experiment is one that she is determined to refine and perfect.

[Grace: 6]