The Art Of Princess Maintenance

One of the worst things about becoming a Fairy Godmother is the weight gain. Seriously, for the first few centuries I could eat all of the gloaming dew and tickleberry nectar I could stomach, and my belly stayed flat and taut as a satyr's drum.

Then I one day a lightning bug trundles up, dumps an envelope in my lap. Then he goes "You've been served!" As soon as I open the folder with my Godmother duty selection, I swelled up like a breakfast sausage. Let me tell you, we fairies like gossamer and lace and showing off a lot of skin, and those kinds of clothes are not really designed to adapt to the ass of their wearer quadrupling in size in an instant. I had to fly home fat and naked, sweating like a pig on wings that were

not

used to working that hard.

So yeah, Godmother Duty. Kinda like your human idea of jury duty, in that it's nothing anyone wants to do, unless you happen to get assigned to some high-profile case like Cinderella that you can make bank writing a book about later. That almost

never

happens. Every princess has to have a Fairy Godmother by their third birthday, and you have to stick around until they marry a prince and get the ever after.

And

you have to be nice. That last bit may not sound like a big deal, but you have to remember that

every

fairy is eligible for Godmother Duty. I am not your run-of-the-mill dandelion-riding glitter-farting tart. I happen to be attendant to the Unseelie Court, and we are

not

known for our predilection toward benevolence.

For that reason, the selection committee generally gives us a pass, given our enthusiastic affection for things like needle-sharp teeth and human suffering. Still, we're signatories to the Convention, which means a certain percentage of us

have

to be selected, or all sorts of paperwork kicks in. There aren't

any

types of fairies that like paperwork.

So I let the queen know what's up, Court-attendance-wise. She's irritated, obviously, but she's pretty cool about it. She grants me a boon and a geas to help me out. The geas is to do my best for the survival of my princess or suffer torment. That sounds like kind of a downer, but it's actually more along the lines of keeping me motivated. Our people just prefer to be under a geas if we have to do something we don't like, or we tend to wander off or start torturing things.

The boon I held on to. The Queen of Winter has a lot of power, way way more than I do, so a boon from her is a hell of a thing. You gotta be kinda careful with it, though. She's bound by her word to grant what you ask, if it's in her power to do so, but if you ask for something that irritates her, she has a million billion ways to make your life miserable, for

centuries

. So, I figured it was best if I thought about it for a while until I could pick one that would please her, or at least not bother her.

So armed (and many-chinned), I set out to meet the little turdburger I'd been saddled with for the next decade or two. Turns out she was born in a castle, which is good, because I was a little worried it was going to be a rags-to-riches sitch. Said castle turned out to be big and white and shining, pennants blazing from every spire, a shining beacon to all the land, et cetera.

Only downside is the kingdom itself. My princess was the heir to the Magic Kingdom. Like there's only one, right? I personally know of at

least

a half dozen that are also called the Magic Kingdom. What would be magic was if any of the founders had had the creativity to invent a proper noun. Anyway, this particular Magic Kingdom was pretty standard western-myth stereotype. Wizards, witches, orcs, elves, the occasional giant, a bat-winged, fire-breathing dragon every twenty years, you know the sort of thing.

The problem with this kind of neighborhood is that it's practically

founded

on the idea of the kidnapped princess. I checked the paperwork from the Fairy Godmother Committee, and yup, there it was. The FGC mandated that I preside over

at least

one kidnapping for my princess. That didn't mean I had to have her kidnapped, it meant that

someone

would be contracted for a kidnapping, and I had to tag along to effect timely advice or minor magic to ensure her eventual escape and/or rescue.

Not a big deal, right? Except that if the little ditz manages to get killed, my credit for Fairy Godmothering is void, and I'm stuffed right back at the front of the queue for the next princess in line. Since kidnappings in kingdoms like this are

never

political, they generally only happen after the princess grows tits. That means that if she croaks before that all that time putting up with her while waiting on the jugs to develop doesn't count for anything.

Now, I don't want you to misunderstand me. I don't have anything against the concept of princesses in general, or against mine in particular. Hell, I was kinda curious to see what kind she turned out to be. A cousin of mine in the Court had duty and

her

princess turned out to be this tomboy joan-of-arc type asskicking warrior. Said it was the most fun she'd ever had, still checks in on the descendants every now and then. She even shows up in a corner of their coat of arms, wings and teeth and all.

Well, it's kind of hard to judge how someone is going to turn out when they're three years old. Usually. In my case, it was pretty obvious right away. The first time I saw Princess Natalie, she was staring intently at one of the castle's collection of feral cats, watching as it carefully gave itself a tongue bath. This lasted for a few minutes, until she levered herself upright and bumbled over to the animal, which ignored her and continued licking itself. At least, until she bent down, grabbed a double fistful of fur, and began licking it too.

I used up the FGC magic quota for a week preventing that cat from mauling her. It never got over the trauma, and would attack the princess on sight from that moment on. I put up with this for about two more weeks before the body of the offended feline mysteriously turned up in the pen the king kept his hunting dogs in. I can understand wounded sensibilities, and I like cats (natural sociopaths), but my patience has limits.

----

Princess Catlicker didn't improve my impression of her intelligence over the next few weeks, and it became clear that the vast majority of my Fairy Godmothering would be preventing her from killing herself through acts of blind stupidity before I could get her married off. She was basically good-natured, and as she grew it became clear that she would be a willowy beauty, just like her genre of princess should be, but I swear to the Queen she had to be the stupidest creature I'd ever met.

Her toddler years were basically a study in steering her away from sharp things, hot things, and ledges (so many ledges in that castle...

so many

). After a while, I could more or less handle that on autopilot, and the status quo held up for a few years. By the time she was eight or nine, her stupidity took on a sort of cunning wit of its own, and became infinitely more subtle in its attempts to kill her. I spent her tween years preventing her from smelling, ingesting, and applying-as-makeup more toxins than I ever knew existed. Did you know humans can't eat hemlock? They don't get high or anything, they just turn funny colors and die.

She almost didn't survive puberty, because

I

wanted to kill her. Her sex drive didn't manifest in an interest in men, even though I went out of my way to make sure she tripped and landed in the arms of a strapping young castle guard or two. I don't mean that she wasn't straight, I mean that whatever was crosswired in her head knew she had a lot of new urges, it just didn't know what to apply those urges

toward

. Which meant that she did everything with a sort of breathless, frustrated,

idiotic

gusto. I applied to the FGC to be allowed to teach her how to masturbate, in the hopes of bleeding off some of the overflow, but they're kind of prudish about that sort of thing. The did append a coda to my assignment that freed me from having to safeguard her virginity, because I was burning through the magic budget like a flame sprite just to keep her alive.

A lot of the people that you think of as 'stupid' aren't, not really. What they are is unmotivated. True, functional idiots are as rare as actual geniuses. Princess Natalie was a diamond among these. She

was

motivated. She loved life, and people, and cats, and chickens, and knives, and fire, and the moat. Sometimes a number of these things at once. Even standard princessish activities like needlework were a minefield of narrowly missed arteries and almost-disfiguring scars.

Then, finally (finally!) her tits came in. Nothing special or anything, nice, high, not too big, pretty pink nipples, appropriate to the graceful figure of the newly adult princess of her eighteenth summer. Now all I had to do was keep her alive through a kidnapping, and the FGC had promised to use its influence to get her married off as quickly as possible afterward. The chairman confided in me that he was glad I'd ended up with the assignment, because he didn't think anyone without a touch of evil could have weathered her this long. I was inclined to agree.

Then, inevitably, she screwed it all up by kidnapping herself. On the morning after her eighteenth birthday, she wasn't in her bed. The castle was in an uproar. The FGC hadn't sent me any word of a pending action, and they do

not

fuck up on that kind of stuff. As far as bureaucracies go, the Fairy Godmother Committee is a model of studied efficiency.

So, anyway, she was gone. Even with my locater spells I couldn't find her for fifteen minutes. When I finally did, she was on a thin trail, threaded through acres of marsh behind the castle. She had set a determined pace, and in a rare flash of practicality, she was wearing one of her coats. Wearing it over her nightie, but still. I flew around the next bend ahead of her and landed, taking the form of an old peasant woman.

When she came upon me, she spake, "Hello, old peasant woman!"

"Hello dearie, what are you up to today?"

"I am going to go see the forest." she said, gesturing to a dark line of trees a couple of miles away. This being the Magic Kingdom, that forest was peopled with all manner of nasty creatures.

"Why would you do that, dear? It's dangerous."

"I've never been!"

I was tempted to ask if she'd ever jumped off a cliff, but I didn't want to give her any ideas. I sighed and resigned myself to the task.

"Don't you think it would be safer back in the castle?"

That gave her pause for a few seconds. Then she beamed at me and said "No, there are

swords

in the castle!"

At one point the Sergeant-at-Arms had tried to explain to her why the armory wasn't an appropriate place for little princesses. Apparently something stuck.

I sighed. "Well, be careful, dearie."

"Okay!"

She tromped away from me, her stride the determined, confident pace reserved for the unwise. It would take her a few more minutes to hit the edge of the forest, and I decided to risk letting her drown in the marsh long enough to open a channel to the FGC chairman. I explained the situation.

"Basically, I'm pretty sure I can keep her alive. Where do we fall on disfigured?"

"We tend to frown on that. Keep her in one piece. I doubt she'll leave the forest a virgin, but we've already covered you for that. Save your magic for life-threatening situations."

"Man, I want an extra century of duty exemption if she survives to her wedding."

"You keep that one alive, Fae, and I will personally see to it you never have to do this again."

"My very own Augean Stables."

"I wouldn't let that one anywhere near running water."

I grunted and closed the channel.

----

I caught up just as she was crossing the forest's threshold. Perfect timing, really, I got a front row seat as she immediately stepped off the path and directly into a hunting snare that yanked her, squawking in surprise, right into the air. She dangled there by one leg, her coat flipped up over her, hiding everything above her waist except the ends of her long blond hair and the tips of her fingers. Below her waist, however, was a different story. It seemed the princess had forgotten some of her undergarments. Again. I have to admit, her personal attendant takes her job seriously, vis-a-vis the royal pubic hair situation.

I sighed and flitted up to the apex of the snare to examine it. Attached just behind one of the knots was a strip of leather with a few glyphs. An alarm tag, and goblin runes. I cocked an ear and, sure enough, I could just make out the rustle of an approaching hunting party.

There they came, squat and green. I watched as they exclaimed over their unexpected bounty. In a couple of minutes, they had her cut down and tied ankles and wrists to a stick that two of the taller ones hefted up on their shoulders. Through all of this, the princess kept up a lively stream of chatter, asking questions the taciturn creatures didn't bother to answer, although that didn't dampen her enthusiasm. Eventually one of them balled up a strip of leather and stuffed it into her mouth just to get some peace.

I trailed them to their small village, where they propped her stick up between two trees and let her dangle. A couple of them began poking various parts of her and talking among themselves, obviously discussing possible recipes. The rest of them went to gather the rest of the village to the feast. I wandered around until I spotted the village elder, a wizened old goblin woman, carrying a staff covered in fetishes of various effects. I flitted down to her and revealed myself.

Now you have to understand, obviously there are certain guidelines about Fairy Godmother appearance dictated by the FGC, like enforced obesity and big hair. However, we have some leeway when it comes to individual differences, and I chose to maintain my Unseelie facial features. Which meant that what the goblin shaman saw appear in front of her was a fat fairy a third of her height in a frumpy dress, with solid red eyes and a mouthful of needle teeth.

She just stared at me for a moment, her mouth hanging open in shock, and then she proceeded to fall backward onto her ass, laughing so hard she dropped her stick.

-"Mehahaha hooo ohhhh haha ohhh that's good, that's good. So we have a princess and a Godmother from the Winter Court, this is not a thing seen every day."-

I grinned at the old bitch. It

was

funny. -"Well, and you know what I'm here for. Shall we set some ground rules?"-

-"Oh, but my boys will be sad to lose the feast. Still, I was a princess, once, I know the score. That one looks almost ripe, you don't have long to go."-

-"If I don't kill her myself first. I would have

loved

a goblin princess."-

-"My Godmother was a prude. One of the, you know..."- She made a gesture like sprinkling dust.

I laugh. -"I know the type, yes. So, here's the deal. I'm kind of annoyed with her. I need her alive, I need her physically unharmed, but I don't need her

virtuous

, if you get my meaning."-

The old woman gets a thoughtful look. -"Hmm. Well, well. There

is

something I can use her for. No lasting harm.

And

I can even keep her a virgin. If not virtuous."-

-"Then by all means, have at her."-

----

One of them had removed her gag, which meant that she was nattering at everyone and everything again. She seemed blissfully unconcerned about the fact that she was tied up and surrounded by short monsters. I suppose her blithe attitude had something to do with the fact that I'd protected her from major mishap all these years. Well, and the fact that she really was astoundingly stupid. I often wondered if she had survival instincts and just overrode them, of if she'd left them on the counter along with her common sense.

The shaman went down to have a word with her boys, who made collective noises of disappointment at first, but then perked up as she outlined what she wanted from them. She also sent a runner who disappeared into one of the huts, briefly, and then reappeared, trotting over to me with a shot glass full of what turned out to be goblin beer. It was the size of a small bucket in my hands. I thanked the goblin and then flitted up to a low branch to settle in and watch the show.

A word about goblins. They are inherently creatures of Earth, unlike me (Air, Darkness), and as such their magic tended to be collectively harnessed from the spiritual energy of their entire community and channeled through their elders. In this case that was the old shaman who was currently directing her horde to seat the princess in front of a tree and tie her there by pulling her arms back and securing them behind it.

Shamanistic magic is powerful, usually slow to act, and tends to center around various aspects of fertility, like crops, or abundant game, or more babies for the village. It's not capable of producing virgin birth (that takes a randy deity), so I knew we weren't going to leave with the princess carrying any little green babies, but it was almost definitely going to be sexual in nature, because Earth magic is almost

always

sexual in nature. When it isn't dealing with blood sacrifice, anyway. It also probably wasn't going to be particularly hygienic, but that's mostly because these are goblins. I mean, come on.

The princess kept nattering at the shaman, even as the goblin used a sharp, bloodstained piece of flint to slit open the front of the girl's nightgown. Finally, glaring at the blond idiot, the shaman touched her staff to the princessly forehead and uttered a few words of power. The princess blinked, and blinked again.

"You help goblin village now, princess." said the shaman.

"I help goblin village now, princess." replied the princess, her voice a dull monotone.

It was the shaman's turn to blink.

-"Good enough."- The old goblin gestured, and two of her warriors stepped forward, standing to either side of the princess. Both of them pulled their loincloths aside and began to stroke themselves hard. I'll say this for goblin men, they are

men

. I mean, their cocks are man-sized.

Human

man-sized. It's an impressive display on a species that doesn't come much higher than a human knee.

Anyway, they began jacking themselves off in front of the princess. The shaman lowered the tip of her staff to touch the princess's breastbone, and said a single word of power. Both of the warriors began to cum, each expertly aiming their issue at one of the princess's breasts, every square inch of which was shortly coated in a thick layer of goopy, dripping goblin cum. The warriors backed away from the princess and returned to the crowd, and the shaman spoke another few syllables.

The princess's breasts immediately began to swell. She stared down at them, her mouth opening and closing like a fish out of water as her nipples drank the cum off of the surface of her titflesh. Soon the pool had flowed completely into them, and her little tits and their perky pink nipples had swollen well past the size of her head. Her nipples had turned into proud red knobs the size of fat strawberries.

I wondered if the ritual would leave them that way. The princess already had to use an inordinate percentage of her available processing capacity to stay upright. Amusing as it might be, having her crawling around on all fours like a blond cow of slightly below-average intelligence (for a cow) probably wouldn't help her marriage prospects. On the other hand, they were pretty spectacular tits. I decided just to watch and wait.

The warriors began to form a queue, staring at the princess's feet and going on for dozens and dozens of goblin men. The shaman said something to the first one, and he clambered up the princess's body, until each of his feet was planted firmly on a royal tit, sinking slightly into the pale flesh. He released his cock from his loincloth, where it dangled just in front of the royal nose.