The Art of Princess Maintenance Ch. 03

Now I was sitting across from the whiny asshole in his little tree cottage negotiating compensation.

"What do you mean you don't have any money?! Who goes anywhere with no gold?!"

I sighed. "It wasn't a planned trip. We don't have anything."

He squints out the window to the spot he'd made me tie Puppy so he could keep an eye on him. "Then what's that big white bag on your horse?"

"That's a princess."

He glares at me for a minute, trying to figure out if I'm making fun of him.

I continued. "I'm serious. It's a princess wrapped in the web of a drider we ran into this morning."

Something in his manner relaxes. "Gertrude?"

"That's the one."

"Gertrude's a good neighbor. She's nice to me, and she scares off the riff-raff." He glances back out the window at Puppy and scowled, "Mostly."

"Yeah, she's a real good egg. Layer. Anyway, I don't know what I can do for you. If we manage to get back to the castle, I guess you could come visit sometime, I'm pretty sure the King would cough up a few doubloons."

He was still staring out the window while he waved away my suggestion with the flap of a hand. "No offense, lady, but I don't peg your odds too high."

It was hard to argue with that.

After a moment he continued, "This princess of yours, is she fair?"

"I've never known her to be anything less than equitable."

That earned me another scowl. I kept my expression bland. Some people need to be fucked with, whether they know it or not.

"Are those her... her feet?"

"I promise she's not ugly enough for those to be her face. That's on the other end."

He barely paid any attention to my response. He used an oversize handkerchief to mop at his suddenly sweaty bald pate. "I think... I think we may be able to come to... an arrangement."

"Please tell me this arrangement has nothing to do with her feet."

He bit a rubbery lower lip and stared at me, nervously twisting his handkerchief with his fists.

I lowered my face into my cupped hands and released an explosive sigh.

Rubbing my temples and looking back up, I said, "Fine. But those are royal feet. I think you'll agree that whatever you have in mind eclipses the value of your cabbage patch."

He narrowed his gaze, a cunning gleam blooming therein like a runaway case of pinkeye. "That beast crushed half of my garden-humans!"

I just stared at him, unwilling to let the death of chintzy, cheap, plaster figurines shift the needle.

He sighed. "What do you propose?"

"You put us up for the night, and in the morning you give me enough food for the princess for, say, three days. You get to... do your thing, in the morning, before we leave. Not tonight."

He mopped at his head again. "As long as it takes, in the morning."

I thought for a minute. "We won't leave until noon, but we will leave at noon, and the mule gets to graze on your garden while you do your business, to lend you some urgency. And, loathe as I am to stipulate this, you will not touch her without me present to witness."

I really wasn't eager to be there, but I'll trust a giant poisonous spider queen any day over a gnome with a foot fetish. He enthusiastically gestured assent to my requirements.

Then he said, "I know you find this distasteful. I can see it on your face. If you're going to be there during, I want you to... talk to me. During."

"Uh..."

"I want you to tell me what you really think of me."

I began to get the idea. "With pleasure. Now help me get her inside. I don't want that cocoon to turn into concrete if it rains on her. If you do most of the work, I'll give you a little preview of what I think of you tonight."

It's amazing how strong a motivated gnome is.

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Look, I know that I've described the humpy parts of the adventure in pretty graphic detail so far, but I saw things the next morning that... I'm not predisposed to sympathy, for anything, but I was truly grateful that the princess was still knocked out while that greedy little gnome had his way with her young (virgin? I guess?) feet.

I do have to say, though, it's pretty interesting making a guy get off by telling him how pathetic he is. I won't say I got turned on, exactly, but I do intend to try insulting some hotter guys and seeing where it goes. The idea of a Sidhe noble groveling like that gnome did... mmm. If I manage not to use it, and we manage to survive, I think I just figured out what I'll use my boon from the Winter Queen for. I think she might understand.

"That's all you've got in you, you sad little bitch? You haven't even half a dozen times. There's still a half hour until noon, and Puppy's just found your carrots."

That last part was actually a lie. Puppy had finished off the carrots an hour ago, and was currently making strong inroads into the radishes. I'd done my best to convey that he was on a timer, and he seemed to have taken the information to heart.

"ohhhhh... ohhhhh..."

"You couldn't even reach her feet from the floor like that. You just came all over yourself the last couple of times. I don't know why I even bothered making a deal with you, there's no way something with a dick that small is any good at magic. I should have just kicked your ass and made you sleep outside. I'm sure the mule would have enjoyed spending the night in here."

"ohhhhh... ohhhhh pleeease..."

"So are we done here, stumpcock?"

I have to admit that by this point it was kind of impressive when his thoroughly spent manhood twitched and started to harden again under my abuse.

--------

So, I learned something. Help a gnome clean his pipes and he's a completely different person. He washed his, uh, attentions off of the princess's feet, and once I'd had a chance to make sure the webbing had cured, he gently cut the cocoon off her with a pair of garden shears. We loaded her onto Puppy, who we found practicing mudmaking a little ways into the forest. His stomach bulged with the yield of about thirty percent of the gnome's garden. He was logy with digestion, but fairly cooperative (for a mule).

I chatted with the gnome for a while longer, and between the two of us we made a best guess as to the direction of the castle from his little homestead. He made a couple of suggestions about the trails we should try while he loaded Puppy with enough food to feed the princess for at least two weeks, and I told him that while he probably wouldn't ever get a shot at her feet again (depending on how kinky her eventual beau was), if I was ever back to visit Gertrude I'd make sure to swing by and share my opinions at him again.

"If I'm honest, Mistress, if I'd known how good you were at um, opinions, I wouldn't have asked for the princess at all."

"That's flattering, I think. Maybe. I won't say I completely hated the experience. Worm."

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The princess started to wake up a few hours later, announcing this by moaning and grinding against Puppy where she was draped over him. Puppy did not enjoy the process, and about the fourth time she dazedly groped forward and tried to jack off one of his ears he bucked her off as gently as anyone has ever been bucked off of anything.

She flew off of his back and, with the sort of miraculous agility reserved for idiots and people who are just the right amount of drunk, she landed on her feet. She stood still for a moment, swaying and panting, staring off into the middle distance. Puppy and I watched her with the sort of resigned foreboding best reserved for daily mortar bombardments.

Then she began to emit a sort of keening moan, startlingly loud in the relative peace of that part of the forest. She collapsed to the ground, briefly dropping to all fours. Using her hands to give her a little extra starting thrust, she exploded into a full speed sprint. She blasted past me, oblivious as always, her wail dopplering creepily and stunning me for a couple of moments. By the time my ass thumped onto the ground, she'd vanished into the undergrowth, leaving only a gaping, princess-shaped hole in the leaves and the echoes of her terrible cry.

After I recovered and fluttered up to my seat between Puppy's ears, he wasted no time in (sort of) hurrying after her. There was no time to lose.

The princess... was on the hunt.