The true beauty of Chen’s dress is that Cyanis appears to have designed it precisely for being strung up in a public square. It’s almost as though she could have known the outcome, so uncanny were her fox senses!

She thus finds herself hanging by the heels suspended over ten feet in the air. Her hair decorations, so cunningly set with many gems, bounce the light of the sun from the horizon into a glimmering pattern of sparkles and shimmers on the ground below. It’s guaranteed to attract the attention of every shopper passing by and make them look up to Chen.

The dress itself, set with its formed hoop skirt, splays out beautifully, rotating with Chen in a wide circle of pink fabric rather like a spinning top moving in slow motion. The ropes on her heels offer just enough rotation that the dress is held in place at its greatest width as Chen slowly rotates back and forth and the rope settles its way inexorably towards a settled state.

Or rather, the rope would settle itself if Chen did not periodically squirm and try to reach up towards her feet in a powerful leg lift, only for the thick dress to bunch up too much, floor in her face with the wind and push her back downwards, setting the rope into a new and faster spin. Of course, she knew that she couldn’t (and shouldn’t) actually escape, but it was important to put on a show. And though Chen was at her reddest being offered on display for all these people, she was also enjoying herself immensely. 

This sort of thing was a special type of Princess embarrassment. She had been caught and was being displayed by a rival kingdom! She had to put on a good show for them, and she also felt a certain kind of special joy in the ritual. They had strung her up like a particularly impertinent handmaiden, which was the point of course, and she knew that everyone was looking at her, but at the same time it made her feel kind of important and special, like Jessic and the Countess cared enough about her to do this sort of public display, and she’d give them the same honor if it ever came to it (though she’d have to think long and hard about how to display a dragon at Sourcefall or Ys. Maybe she could temporarily freeze Jessic and display her as an ice sculpture at a party. She’d have to ask if that would be too unpleasant, she didn’t want to do anything painful!)

So, at least initially, Chen was quite enjoying herself, almost a cute squirming time of meditation after such an overwhelming day. She was a little worried about Rose and Yue, but they were both eminently competent (even if they didn’t realize it themselves), so she felt like there was ample time for a daring rescue. Although with Rose...she was a little worried. Rose had looked happy, but she’d also still been kind of out of it, Chen hadn’t really seen any reaction before she had been dragged off, and she’d had quite an outburst. So she did want to make sure Rose was okay, which was weighing on her. Breaking out now wouldn’t help though, it would be better to wait until the candle burned down and Rose was ready, and for Chen to finish her punishment and have some time to herself. A daring escape in the courtyard would ruin her dress and turn the whole thing into a public spectacle, which would mean Jessic would be forced to catch and further embarrass Chen for the humiliation of trying to escape alone and surrounded like that (granted, if it succeeded it would be a coup throughout the kingdoms, but Chen wasn’t confident enough she could do it to go for the moonshot). 

It was that last that sent her spiraling though. Chen [i]wasn’t[/i] confident in herself. She was way out of her league and not at all up to the level of talent she expected of herself. Qiu had shown her that and sent her here. And all of this would be getting back to Chen’s parents one way or another. Mommy Ysel in particular was going to be so mad. Just so mad, it made Chen’s heart sink into her stomach in defiance of gravity. 

That made her worried too. Maybe they didn’t know. What if Jessic left? Qiu had recommended Jessic help her, but they’d treated the whole thing like a normal capture and if Jessic flew off to go do something else before Chen got a chance to talk with her, she might be stuck for a while. Or what if Jessic just couldn’t help? It wasn’t like Qiu had really understood how Chen was feeling, she had her own thing going (Chen still felt guilt for missing that until it was way too late and hurting Qiu). So maybe Jessic wouldn’t be able to help at all and Chen would just get dragged home, raked over the coals (hopefully metaphorically, though Ysel might go literal on that one), and put back into training for a couple more years until they thought she was ready for another go at Qiu. The idea made her want to cry, which really would be awful hanging in the public square (if she started for real crying, it would get reported and they would come take her down, but it would be just like with Qiu and knock her out of being part of this Princess thing and that would just make her feel [i]worse[/i]).

So Chen hung there, wiggling every so often, and tried to just kind of meditate and hold back tears. She tried not to think too hard about her parents or what they wanted, why she still wasn’t good enough, why Qiu even wanted to conquer all these kingdoms instead of just...like, giving her a hug earlier, why [i]she[/i] felt guilty about how things went with Qiu, and anything about Rose actually being in danger because that was giving her anxiety the more she thought about it. 

She ultimately settled on distracting herself with wondering what Jessic might have done in her life to be any good at counseling. Maybe dragons had all sorts of problems that were just like Chen’s. She tried to imagine a dragon mom and dad shouting at their kid for not breathing fire well enough or...or flying too slowly and bungling it when she tried to swoop and pick something up in a talon quickly. That seemed incredibly cute and at least brought her a little smile. Enough to ward off the dread of her phone ringing or someone coming to get her only to find out that everyone she hoped for had collapsed in the interim. 

[I think this scene triggers Help Me~~ for Jessic or Keron since they’ve taken Chen captive now.]