Toadette's Story: Book 1

Chapter 3 - You're Not the Princess

Break time came to a swift end when 11:58 struck. If I didn’t find where Her Highness was in this garden, there was no telling what punishment I’d get. And to my frustration, each path lined itself with hedges that rose at least two times my height. Eventually, everything started to look the same. Green leaves, beige sand, and a blue sky. The only things helping me were my shoeprints and the sun’s direction.

I took a left exit at a split path to find… a pool? Couldn’t say I was too surprised. This rich environment had everything I lacked as a kid. Gradually, the ground went from warm sand to a rough and sturdy cobblestone. On the opposite side of the pool lay Her Highness in a chair, with a towel over her face. And her feet sticking right out, ready to haunt me. Let’s just get this over with.

“Good afternoon, Your Highness.”

But wait, something was off. Everything about the princess was reduced in size. She looked like she was my height, if not slightly shorter. No, it couldn’t be. The heat was just getting to me.

“Good afternoon.”

Huh? That voice came from… behind.

I turned around, where Her Highness stood tall, leash and collar in hand. And when I twisted back, Her Highness was still lying in that chair. What the hell was going on!?

“Surely you didn’t think that was me with those tiny proportions.”

“Weirder stuff has happened in this kingdom, Your Highness.”

“True, but this is no odd occurrence.”

She swung the towel off the other person, slapping me in the face with it. Whoever this other woman was, she was the spitting image of Her Highness. The skin and hair colours were perfect matches. The only thing she lacked was a coating of lipstick. In her hands, she was playing on one of those video game thingies. Looked like a DS.

Her Highness stuck a hand over the person. “Meet Penelope. My daughter.”

“Daughter!?”

A deserved reaction to a very confusing event going on. These past hours had been full of surprises, but this here took the cake.

“Normally, I’d blame you for being ignorant, but you not knowing about her proves just how good of a mother I’ve been.”

“What do you mean?”

Her Highness grabbed my head, tightening the collar around my neck again. Next thing you know, she was going to have me drinking water out of a bowl.

“I’ve taken extensive measures to guarantee she gets little attention from the various Mushroom Kingdom media outlets. So she gets to live like a normal kid but with benefits. Amazing, is it not?”

Well, I’ll be damned. That’s a pretty good way of parenting. Probably the nicest thing I’ve seen from Her Highness in recent years. But if she was this girl’s mother, who was the daddy? Hmm… The girl bared zero resemblance to an icon like Luigi. Perhaps the true Super Mario? Then again, that’d be a vague link at best.

SPLASH!

Her Highness rose her head above the surface of the water, tugging on the leash. Unlike last time, the leash was now tied to a metal pole rather than commanded by her hand.

“Penelope has you under her control. Let’s see if you’re effective under easy mode.”

Easy mode, huh? The girl’s feet were too dirty for me to call this easy. They weren’t as bad as Minh T.’s feet from yesterday but were no match for her mother’s clean soles from this morning. Given how much focus she had on that little device, maybe I wouldn’t have to do much at all.

“Rub my feet.”

My hopes went up in smokes as she uttered those words. Good news? I didn’t have to use my mouth. Bad news? Well, I’d never given a foot massage before. Hell, no one ever gave me one either. There was no better time to learn than now.

I held one of the kid’s feet and felt around it, getting my bearing. Similarly to her mother, the feel of her feet could not be discredited. Heh, it was like fluffing a very firm pillow. With my thumbs above the middle of her arches, I pushed in before releasing. Rinse and repeat four more times.

Then I stroked the tops of her feet. A laugh slipped out her mouth.

Ooh, was this bad or good? She wasn’t complaining, so maybe she liked the feeling.

“Do my feet smell good?”

Now the girl stared directly at me, head cocked to the side. All I could do was let out a nervous, “Yes, they smell good.”

“Try again. I didn’t feel or even hear you sniff anything.”

Damn it. She certainly had the same Swooper-like senses as her mom. Taking a deep sniff this time, her foot odour violated my nostrils.

“That’s more like it,” she sang, thrusting her foot further in my face.

Although her feet didn’t smell as rotten as I suspected, it wasn’t a pleasing odour. It was very neutral. Nothing pleasant like cherry blossom, but not as deadly as my feet on a good mile run.

Right, she asked me that question. I responded, “They smell nice.”

“Thanks. So keep sniffin’ at them.”

As I continued to smell the girl’s dusty feet, how much sweeter she was than Her Highness became apparent. The princess never told me “thank you”. Yet her daughter displayed more of the manners I expected the leader of our kingdom to have.

SLAM!

The girl closed her game device and had a wide grin. “Suck my toe!”

After seeing what lay between the kid’s toes, I was less than enthusiastic about plopping those things in my mouth. But orders were orders.

I slid her big toe into my mouth, where it sat like a log. My fingers crinkled in horror once my tastebuds detected a flavour. While Her Highness’s feet tasted a bit like chips this morning, these things tasted like sour chips with a dash of black liquorice. Are you ready to vomit yet?

One by one, the girl’s dirty toes entered and exited my mouth. While sucking on them, I could hear Her Highness approaching from behind.

Time to kick things into overdrive. Rather than just sucking these plumpy toes, I forced my tongue to slither between a couple of them. The salty sand was on a mission to make me gag. Once it felt like my tongue was licking a sticky part of her toes, I instantly spit the foot out. Spit dribbled out my lips, but the relief was worth it.

Out of the corner of my eye, two wet feet taunted me.

“So, what do you think of her?”

“Your daughter has… very interesting feet.”

Her Highness kicked me down and applied all her weight onto my exhausted body. One foot flattened my boobs, and the other tried to crush my vagina. This was as bad as being squished by two Thwomps. No matter how I fidgeted, the princess didn’t budge an inch. If anything, she just curled her toes into my skin.

“The question was for Penelope, not you, Toadette.”

Now the girl was standing over my head. One of her chubby feet had yet to crush me, but I waited for it.

“She did well. I saw no problems with her.”

“Oh?” Her Highness dug a foot deeper into my chest.

“Actually, you interrupted the best part, Mother. When she had her tongue licking my toes like that, it was so relaxing.”

“I can’t breathe!” I screamed.

Her Highness’s toes pinched my skin for another time before she stepped off me. In my coughing fit.

“Get used to Penelope, Toadette. You’ve got another big responsibility on your little hands.”

I jumped to my feet. “Excuse me?”

“I’d love to be in my daughter’s life 100% of the time, but duty calls. Therefore, you’ll be her guardian whenever I cannot be.”

I didn’t sign up for this! First, I became some weird foot slave, and now Her Highness made me this little girl’s protector. It’d been years since I interacted with a kid of any kind. Worst of all, there was no way she would raise my pay to compensate for this.

“Your pay will be appropriately increased, but don’t expect a large increase. Whenever Penelope’s outside the castle grounds, I need you to accompany her.”

Scratch that. It seemed I’d be making a few extra coins after all.

Her Highness slid her pink flip-flops on and held the kid at a distance as she wailed and whined.

“Mother, I’ve walked around Toad Town for so long! I don’t need her watching me! You can’t trust me with—”

“QUIET!”

The girl stiffened up like a soldier.

“If you weren’t losing all my money like crazy, we wouldn’t need Toadette monitoring you, right? Someone manages to steal from you every time you’re out and alone, so no, I don’t trust you.”

Her Highness’s daughter yelled and raised her game device in the air.

“Break it,” Her Highness snarled. “You won’t get a replacement any time soon.”

The princess undid my collar and retracted the leash. Meanwhile, her daughter stood in silence with a scrunched face.

“Get to know each other better, you two. When I want you, I’ll summon you, Toadette.”

Her Highness strolled into the gardens, leaving me alone with her daughter.