In Which Underwear Is Denied
Amaranth was already back in her room getting ready for our day in town, but it turned out she had no interest in punishing me, once I’d calmed down enough to tell her what had happened.
“You were being kind,” she said, with her most patient smile.
“But… I lied to her,” I said insistently, as if that explained everything. Well… to me, it did.
“Maybe,” she said kind of ruefully, but still smiling. “But it’s not like you never play kind of loose with the truth without actually lying, is it?”
“Well, yeah,” I said, uncomfortably. I was pretty good with word games, but I was only able to do that by remaining certain that I wasn’t lying… and when I let myself think too hard about that, it started to feel like I was lying to myself on top of everything else. “That’s just how bad I am, though.”
I was starting to shake again. I could feel the need to be punished like a physical thing inside me, apart from and in addition to the dirtiness wrought by the act of lying. Couldn’t she look at me and see how awful I was? I knew Amaranth tended to see the good in everybody, but in that moment, was there anything good in me to see?
“Okay… maybe I do agree that it’s bad for you to twist words to hide things from your friends,” Amaranth said carefully. “And maybe I think you do need some punishing, for not having told us exactly what was going on with Puddy… but I’m not about to go and do that while you’re beating yourself up for an act of charity, am I?”
“You don’t understand,” I said, a trembling whine creeping to my voice. I felt like a small child explaining to her teacher that she really did need to go to the bathroom, right now… not that I’d needed to do any such thing for years, but I still knew what it felt like from when I was younger.
“You’re right, I don’t,” she said, sitting down on the bed, beside some clothes that were surely intended for me… as Amaranth, being a nymph, didn’t wear any. She beckoned me over, and I came uncertainly, allowing her to pull me onto her lap.
Amaranth had a very comfortable lap, with her soft, wide thighs. She was taller than me, too, which helped make it a better fit. Her lap was becoming just about my favorite place to be, ordinarily… but now I fidgeted. I felt like I was soiling her pure and natural beauty just by touching her.
“Do you remember, that day by the tree, when I told you I wanted to help you but I wasn’t going to slap you around or beat you down to do it?” she asked me.
“Uh, yeah,” I said. I did remember that, and it confused me a bit, because it hadn’t been too long after that when she’d given me my first–very public–spanking. Evidently, she considered such actions in an entirely different class than, say, Puddy slapping me in anger. I know they made me feel very differently, but I couldn’t begin to articulate how or understand why.
“Well, that also means I’m not going to help you beat yourself up,” she said, speaking slowly and softly. “I will spank you–or otherwise punish you–when I think you need it, or when you really, truly want it… but I won’t do it to help you twist a good deed into a guilt trip.”
I started crying again then, because there was just so much badness in me, and she didn’t even see it, and she was supposed to be my owner and take care of but she wouldn’t do anything to help me… instead, she just sat there with her arms around me, like she really could love me… like she really did love me… and very slowly, very gradually, I started to feel less bad.
Even more slowly, I started to feel good.
I stopped crying, and my last shuddering sob turned into a kind of shiver. I felt odd. I wasn’t sure what had just happened… something had passed between us, but it was something even more nebulous and ephemeral than the feelings I had after a really good–that is, severe–spanking.
“Okay now, sweetie?” Amaranth asked.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said wanly. My body still felt like it wanted to cry, but my mind didn’t.
“Still up for going to town today?” she asked.
I almost answered automatically, but then made myself stop and think about it… and realized that mostly, I was.
“Yes, ma’am,” I said.
“Good,” she said, and gently slid me off her lap. “Steff’s pretty good with clothing and sizes and things, but I think we’ll do a lot better by you if you’re actually there.”
“What… um… what exactly do you have in mind for this little shopping trip?” I asked nervously.
“Oh, you get downright edible when you’re nervous, you know that?” she said, giggling. “But I suppose we don’t want a repeat of… well, I guess I should just tell you. The main thing we’re going to do is get you enough jeans and shirts and socks that you can make it through a week… we’ll go to the Walled Market or where ever you want and you can just pick out what you’d normally get. But, Steff and I will be picking out one outfit for you, to wear to the dance tonight.”
She got to her feet, picked up the black velvet skirt off the bed and examined it, holding it out and lifting up the hem as if she were peeking underneath it.
“Steff’s got some nice skirts, but you need your own and, anyway, what Steff wears isn’t exactly… clingy,” she said. She glanced sideways at me… or rather, behind me. “We want something that will show off your butt. Probably something good and tight up top, too. Perky little breasts like yours get lost waaaay too easily in a baggy t-shirt.”
“I do not have perky…” I started, only to be cut off by Amaranth’s finger on my lips, shushing me in our now-accustomed fashion.
“If you can’t control your voice, you’ll go to the dance topless,” Amaranth said with a grin. “I’m sure your beau would enjoy that, but would you?”
She removed her finger.
“Y… I mean, no, ma’am,” I said.
“Now, Steff and I have agreed to pool our money for the outfit we pick out–that seems only fair–but I think you can afford a few pairs of jeans and some shirts at Walled Market prices,” Amaranth said. “Right?”
“Well, yeah,” I said. “But…”
“But nothing,” she said. “This is an essential need, Mack. You don’t have enough clothes.”
I stared at her, wanting to argue… not wanting to argue. I couldn’t say that she was wrong, but I couldn’t say that I agreed. Finally I just lowered my head a bit.
“Skipping showers,” she continued, “wearing the same shirt over and over again… I know that’s not the reason you feel dirty all the time, but it can hardly help matters, can it? I mean, if you keep yourself physically clean, you will have less reason to feel emotionally dirty, won’t you?”
“Yes, ma’am,” I said, ducking my head even more and blushing a little. I’d never really thought of it that way. I did live a pretty grungy life. I mean, I wouldn’t say the dirtiness she was talking about was entirely emotional… I knew that parts of me were actually physically dirty… but that didn’t exactly detract from her case, did it?
“Everything Steff owns is so clean and well-cared for,” she said, stroking the skirt and the red velour top they’d picked out for me to wear on our excursion. “Um, I think you’re going to have to wear your own underwear, though,” she said, holding up a pair of bikini briefs. There wasn’t a lot of material to them to begin with, and they’d been stretched pretty badly. “These ones are kind of… yeah, well… um…”
I snorted, in spite of myself.
“You tried them on, didn’t you?” I guessed. Steff was willowy, I was just plain skinny… but Amaranth was generously curved. If she had worn panties, Steff probably would have been able to fit both of her legs through one hole of them.
“On second thought,” Amaranth said, in a high, tight voice that was very different from her usual one, “I don’t think this outfit really needs underwear.” She tossed the ruined panties into a wastebasket with an airy gesture, picked up the skirt again, and threw/shoved it at me. My brain was relentlessly imagining the skirt on me… where its hem would fall on my leg, and how close that would be to places that underwear were meant to cover… but I didn’t dare argue with that tone of voice. “Get changed,” she said, turning and stomping over to the door. “I’m going to go fetch Two.”
“Two’s coming, too?” I asked.
“Yeah,” Amaranth said, turning around in the doorway. Her voice and expression softened a bit. “I think the poor dear just sort of… sits around, when she doesn’t have any classes to go to or homework to do, so I thought we’d include her.”
“That’s a really good idea,” I said, and the light of the sun returned to Amaranth’s face.
I’d made a major gaffe in suggesting (though I was undoubtedly right) that Amaranth had tried on the panties… but I’d just made up for it by complimenting her on her handling of Two. I’d have to make a better effort to remember that her inclinations towards clothing were a sore spot in the future. It wasn’t just some notion of me being “submissive”, or the fact that I’d committed myself to being hers.
In a weird way, it was a matter of propriety. Nymph propriety was a strange idea, but I guess it actually wasn’t that different from any other sort of propriety: just because you know what somebody does behind a closed door doesn’t mean you talk about it.
“You go ahead and get changed, sweetie,” Amaranth said gently, her smile once again radiant. She blew me a kiss, and was out the door.
“Yes, ma’am,” I whispered, though I knew she couldn’t hear me. I slipped off my shorts, and for a moment considered leaving my own underwear… graying cotton briefs… on underneath the skirt. Then, they joined the shorts on the floor, and I peeled off my t-shirt. I didn’t wear a bra to bed, so there was nothing underneath. There was a full-length mirror leaning against the wall between Trina’s bed and her dresser, and I looked at myself in it.
My eyes went first to the black block letters on my forehead… the words “NYMPH’S TOY”, reversed in the mirror. That made me smile, but then my gaze fell to rest upon my tiny breasts.
There wasn’t much to look at… the thickness of one of my own bras practically doubled their size, and they weren’t even padded, unlike the one Steff and Amaranth had laid out for me.
Perky?
No… well, maybe.
If I kind of cupped my hands beneath them, and pushed them up a little, they could kind of…
I heard footsteps and talking in the hall and realized the door was still open. My face flushed hot. I could hear Amaranth talking to Delia Daella, next door. The dark elf was complaining that Two spent every night crying. That was… well, troubling, but not exactly surprising. The golem girl hadn’t had a very happy life, and had only recently gained the freedom even to cry about it.
I realized I was still standing in view of the hall, had anybody cared to look in. I hurriedly turned back towards Amaranth’s bed, but stopped when I picked up the velour top. Amaranth would finish her conversation soon. How soon? If I dressed slowly enough, maybe Amaranth would walk back into the room just as I was putting on the skirt… just in time to glimpse my pulling the fabric down over my ass.
It was a stupid, random thing to think. She’d seen my ass. She’d spanked it. She’d bitten it, actually. She’d seen me entirely naked before, even. She lived her life naked. An eyeful of flesh me would be nothing to her.
Somehow, though, the idea… the image… made me feel…
Well… I don’t know.
Not dirty, exactly.
Not that kind of dirty, anyway… the kind that gave me the screaming horrors and sent me running towards the shower, or more recently, towards Amaranth.
Maybe a better word than dirty would be… naughty.
Yes, I felt naughty. Such a stupid word… a little girl’s word, if you think about it… but it’s how I felt.
I realized that Amaranth would be bringing Two with her, though, and that was the end of my little reverie.
The last thing I wanted was to expose Two to our… well, I didn’t want to expose myself to her. She didn’t need that. My personal fantasy for Two was that she would learn to function on her own and eventually meet a nice guy and adopt 2.4 children and/or a puppy, but until she was able to make decisions more complicated than picking out a dessert, the thought of somebody involving her even tangentially in something even sort of sexual turned my stomach.
So, I dressed quickly and was smoothing out the skirt, trying to get its hem down as low on my thighs as I could, when Amaranth and Two arrived. Still, the idea refused to lay down and be quiet… it stayed with me all the way down the stairs and out the door, and on the way to the carriage, when Amaranth finally asked me why I was so quiet, I found that I didn’t know what to say and was incapable of saying it.
Steff caught up with us as I was blushing and spluttering worse than ever before, with Amaranth looking on in amused wonderment.
“What did you do?” Steff asked her, in a tone of awed amazement.
Amaranth just shook her head.
“I had nothing to do with this one, I swear,” she said, giggling.
Steff gave me an up-and-down look that only made me blush harder, and ended my meager attempt to voice a coherent thought.
“I’m serious, Amy,” she said, turning to Amaranth though her eyes were on me. “If you ever find out where she came from, I want one for myself.”
Mmmhhh, dancing with topless women. That idea puts wings on my feet or some where physio-illogical.
missing a word in this line…
and she was supposed to be my owner and take care of [me] but she