Neat Feet

Samantha was struggling to find new shoes that worked for her. The dalmatian’s formerly white sneakers had faded to a dull, dusty brown with years of use. Her paws were very large: a women’s size 16 US (14 UK, 48 EU). It was hard enough to find shoes that actually fit, but what made it especially difficult for the dog she had a footpaw odor problem. These sneakers, as old and worn down as they were, had been the only ones she could find that fit and enough odor absorption that she felt comfortable going around in public. But when the rubber sole started to detach from the bottom of the shoe and catch on things as she walked, she knew it was time to make a sincere effort to replace them. She’d spent most of a day going store to store and hadn’t been able to find a size that even fit properly, let alone one that could address the odor issues. It was late afternoon when she arrived at the final shoe store in her city, before she could no longer walk from her home and would have to take a cab or a bus. Samantha looked up at the neon green sign hanging above the beige outer wall: Neat Feet. A bell jingled on the door as she opened it and stepped inside, the leathery smell of new shoes filling her nose. She scanned the boxes and displays of shoes, trying to see if she could locate a 16 anywhere in the women’s department before going further inside and risking the embarrassment of leaving without buying anything.

“Hi there, can I help you find something?” asked a male voice, causing Samantha to jump a little in surprise.

The dalmatian turned to see the source of the voice and saw a hyena. His eyes were emerald green and he had a ring piercing just above a chunk missing from his left ear. He was dressed in jeans and a company T-shirt, with a nametag which read: Roy.

“M-maybe,” said Samantha, trying not to get her hopes up too much. “Probably a long shot but do you have anything in women’s size 16?”

Roy showed his teeth in a wide grin that would have been somewhat unsettling if it weren’t for his gentle eyes.

“You’re in luck! Just signed for some earlier this morning, I think they’re still in the back.” He paused for a moment. “Any style preferences?”

Samantha shook her head. “Honestly I don’t care what they look like at this point, as long as they fit.” “Well, we can try a few and see what you like,” said Roy. If you don’t mind taking a seat I’ll be right back!" He gestured to a padded stool before twirling around on his toes and heading into the back room. Samantha sighed a little bit as she sat down. A shy part of her had been hoping they didn’t have any, so she wouldn’t have to take off her shoes in front of someone else. Most of her though, was relieved at the prospect of not risking tripping with every step.

Roy came out of the back room less than a minute later with a simple black shoe-box, the size and area conversions labeled on the side. He opened the top and showed off the shoes: they were gray with white laces, and very simplistic in design.

“Great! I’ll take them,” she said. Roy smiled and handed the box to Samantha, who stood up and began to make her way to the checkout counter.

“Hey hold on, don’t you want to try them on first?” asked Roy, confused.

Samantha turned to him quickly and shook her head. “I’d rather try them on at home, if you don’t mind.”

Roy tilted his head in an expression of concern. “I know it’s not my call to make, but your shoes are literally falling apart. I wouldn’t feel right sending you home like this.”

“E-even so, I’m kind of embarrassed about taking my shoes off,” she said quietly.

Roy gave her a reassuring smile. “I’ve been in this business a long time, I’ve seen everything.”

Samantha’s ears drooped and her cheeks flushed pink. “Promise you won’t laugh?”

“I’m a hyena, I can’t make that promise,” he said with a grin. “I promise I won’t judge, though.”

“O-okay well um… see the thing is that I’m er… that is to say…” she hemmed and hawed, and then decided to just say it. “I have paw odor problems. They’re bad. Like, really bad.”

Roy cackled harshly and Samantha could feel her face heat up in embarrassment. She knew she should have kept her mouth shut, this was what happened with everyone. She was just about ready to rush back out the door in shame when Roy spoke again.

“You too?” he asked. “Come with me, we’ve got rooms and solutions for that.” He gently took the shoe-box from her and gave her a reassuring pat on the shoulder, which made her realize that the sharpness of his laughter was simply how he laughed. She breathed a sigh of relief and followed him into a narrow corridor behind two heavy doors, with an enclosed space between them acting as a sort of airlock.

When Samantha entered the corridor, she took a few sniffs to get a canine feel for her new surroundings. She could smell that distinct paw odor similar to her own but it was faint.

“Doesn’t smell that bad now,” said Roy, who could hear the sniffs and knew what Samantha was doing.

“It’s been a while since we’ve had someone come back here, but hoo boy, it can get pretty funky.” He was leading her towards a dead-end branch in the hallway with a padded stool at the end. “It’s why they have me take care of it, I’m used to it thanks to these bad boys.” Roy gestured to his own shoes.

Samantha nodded and sat down on the stool, watching as Roy went into a side corridor and shuffled some boxes around, coming out with a similar shoebox to the first one. He opened it and revealed the shoes. They were the same color and style as the the first ones but the tops appeared to be a bit taller. She took the box and placed it next to her, reaching down to undo the laces. She hesitated, looking up at Roy and then back at her shoes.

“You can do this Samantha,” she said to herself. She took a deep breath, exhaled, and then undid the laces. The smell was practically visible, a fog of odor rising in a thick cloud as she slid her steaming socked paw out from the shoe. As it filled the enclosed space and was impossible to ignore, she looked up at Roy sheepishly.

“S-sorry. It’s pretty terrible, isn’t it?” she said apologetically.

“I’ve smelled worse,” Roy shrugged.

With slightly boosted confidence Samantha undid the other laces and removed the shoe from the other paw.

Setting her old shoes aside, she took the new shoes and slipped them on, wiggling her toes and feeling the padding of the insole. It was memory foam and it conformed to the shape of her pawpads. The shoes were just the right width and just the right length, but the insides felt a bit higher than they should, leaving a noticeable gap between the tops of her paws and the tops of the shoes.

“So, how do they fit?” asked Roy. Samantha stood up and took a few test steps down the hallway. Her paws definitely lifted more than they should have within the shoe with each step.

“Well, they fit well enough I guess, but they’re a bit… tall? And um…” she sniffed the air a few times. “…yeah, I still smell my paws.”

Roy held a forefinger up and waggled it back and forth with a smirk.

“Ah, but that’s only the first step!” he said as made his way back into the side corridor. Samantha could hear him shuffling drawers and clicking his tongue as he searched. “See, what everyone else does is try to cover the smell but that never works. What you have to do is… shoot, I know we’ve got the 16 W somewhere… aha, here we are!” The shuffling noises continued and she could hear the snap of lids being closed. Roy came out of the back room with two opaque plastic boxes, with small holes poked in the top. One of them was about half the size of her shoe but completely square, and the other one was the same length of a shoe but half as wide.

“What you have to do,” Roy continued, “is get rid of the smell, and what better way to do that…” he flipped open the square box, “than by having someone sniff it for you?”

The dalmatian gasped as she looked down at a pudgy micro otter laying on plush velvet padding, who was as wide as he was tall. His fur was brown and his eyes were blue. He blushed the blue of his skin and waved shyly at the canine staring at him. Above him, laser-inscribed into the plastic, read: Cooper.

“Is this even legal!?” Samantha blurted out in shock. Roy gave another distinctly hyena laugh at her question.

“Of course it’s legal! We wouldn’t still be in business if it weren’t,” he said as flipped the top off the other box, revealing a fox. His fur was purple and black, with white irises amid seas of black. His vulpine tail swished a little bit as he looked up at the giant dog with a smile. He too had a laser-etched label for his name: Avaros.

Samantha continued to stare down at the micros in astonishment. Roy could sense an incoming awkward silence and preemptively broke it.

“They signed up for this, you know. They like the smell,” said Roy.

Samantha looked up at him with furrowed brows, the disbelief in her expression coming through clearly.

“I’m serious!” said Roy, gesturing down to his left leg. “I’ve got this one little corgi gal, highlight of her day is when I put my shoes on. She loves when it gets especially stifling in there.” He lifted up his left leg and tapped on the bottom of the shoe. “Isn’t that right, Owashii?”

Roy then started to cackle seemingly out of nowhere. “H-hey! You know I’m ticklish! Calm down, cutie!” His laughter slowed down and he lowered his leg back to the ground. “There’s a good girl.” He then looked back up at the dalmatian. “So yeah, they’ll sniff it all up and love you for it.”

Samantha looked down at the two micros with a bit of lingering uncertainty. “Do you two really… I mean, my paws have actually cleared rooms before, I’m not sure you realize what you’re getting into,” she said with concern in her voice. The idea that anyone could actually like the intense smell of her paws was completely alien to her.

Cooper’s face blushed bright blue and he hid his face behind his handpaws, his otter tail thumping against the cushioning in excitement and betraying his visible shyness. Avaros was reaching up with grabby paws, clasping and unclasping his fingers with shimmering eyes in equal excitement to the otter.

“Show them your paws. Let them see what they’re getting into,” suggested Roy.

Samantha carefully placed the boxes on the floor, looking down at the two. Avaros nodded and gave another reaching grab towards the giant dog, a pleading look in his eyes. Cooper was still hiding behind his handpaws but peeked between them, and in the slight space where she could see his eyes, she saw excitement.

With a sighing exhale of slight reluctance, Samantha undid the laces of her new shoes, and slipped them off. It hadn’t taken long for the power of her scent to compact itself in the small space, leaking out of the opening in thick plumes and filling the room once more. She could hear small but frantic sniffs from the micro below her, leaving her bewildered. The dalmatian held her socked feetpaws over the micros and gave a few wiggles of her toes.

To her, this was just an idle movement, but to them this was one of the greatest things they had ever seen. The socks clung to her paws with their dampness and accentuated the curves of her pads. They weren’t visibly moist. They didn’t seem all that sweaty but the smell was so intense that a visible haze rose from the fabric. The micros sniffed eagerly, leaning themselves up to try to get closer, until they realized they were a bit more excited about this than they first noticed.

The giant dog moved her toes out of the way to see what was happening, and opened her eyes wide with a pink blush as she saw the two covering their crotches with their hands. The otter’s face was glowing blue under the brown of his fur, and the vivid white of the fox’s flesh combined with the purple of his fur in a lighter purple glow. All three of them spent a few seconds just staring at each other while blushing.

Roy was doing his absolute best to stifle his laughter. This was far too precious to be real.

“Put your paws on them, see how they feel,” he said between snickers.

Samantha slowly lowered her paws down and covered the micros, trapping their heads between her steamy sock-covered toes. She jumped a little in surprise as she felt their little noses sucking in her paw stench with long, deep inhales.

It was just as overwhelming as they’d hoped when they first signed up for this. The smell clung to the inside of their noses and filled their lungs like a dense, humid fog of nasal ambrosia. It stuck to their pores, permanently staining them with her smell and if they hadn’t already decided they wanted to belong to her, they were now marked for life.

She could feel their bumps and rubs against the fabric of her socks and their wriggles to try to get closer to her paws. As their faces bumped up against her socked toes, the arches of her paws felt what their hands had been covering up, causing her to blush just as deeply as they did.

“O-oh. They really like this,” she said as she looked up at Roy, who was grinning ear to ear. Samantha attempted to lift her paws away, but it was as if they were stuck. She looked down and let out a yelp of surprise as she saw the two micros clinging to her paws and not letting go. Once they heard her cry out they quickly let go and looked a bit ashamed of themselves as she tucked her paws against herself.

“S-sorry, Mistress” said Cooper, hiding behind his handpaws again.

“Was that too much?” Avaros said, his ears drooping down as he looked away from her.

Samantha was astonished at all of this, her thoughts racing with all this new information. It took a few seconds for the chaos of colliding thoughts to give way to clarity. She didn’t mind, she just hadn’t been expecting such an enthusiastic reaction to her paws of all things.

“That wasn’t too much,” she said gently. Cooper peeked between his fingers and Avaros looked back towards her. They outstretched their arms as she lowered her paws back down onto them, closing her eyes as she felt their little lips pepper her paws with small smooches, hugging themselves in place. She let out a sigh of contentment through her nose.

Roy couldn’t hold back any longer and burst out laughing, causing a startled Samantha to leap up to her feet and stand right atop the micros. She yelped again, realizing she was pinning them down with her full weight, looking down quickly and expecting far worse than what she saw: their little outstretched hands just poking out from under her soles, and their heads trying to wriggle their way deeper between toes. She breathed a sigh of relief, and took some time to recover from a brief moment of panic. The hyena took this time to recover from his cackling fit.

“I’m sorry,” he said, wiping a tear of laughter from his eye, “but that was the cutest thing I have ever seen.”

The hyena then gave that exhaling sigh one does after an intense bout of laughter, getting back to business.

“Now, notice anything different?” he asked.

Samantha tilted her head in confusion at Roy, who tapped his nose as a hint. Samantha sniffed at the air a few times, and tried to gauge what was going on. The only thing she noticed was that the scent of paws seemed to be fading, nothing really out of the ordinary.

“I mean, I don’t really smell anything all that-” she paused and blinked a few times. The smell of the paws was fading? “Wait a minute.”

The dalmatian sniffed deeply at the air a few times and she wasn’t imagining it: the micros had sniffed the smell right out of her socks.

“Oh,” she said, looking down with widened eyes at the parts of the micros she could see sticking out from beneath her paws. “Oh wow.”

Avaros and Cooper’s noses were like vacuums and their fur was like sponges, soaking in and absorbing the intense smell. It was intoxicating to them, enough to fog their senses and leave them feeling slightly dazed. But that didn’t stop their intense desire to worship and please the giant dog lady. Despite their eagerness, she could feel the warmth of their blushes through the fabric and against her soles. The whole idea had been unbelievable at first, but now she was convinced.

Samantha sat back down, and with a bit of effort managed to lift her paws up with the micros still clinging to them. She was able to slip Avaros into a shoe with very little issue, his slender body about the same width of her sole. Cooper was a bit of a struggle, his fat little body resisting the space at first. But with a few grunts of effort and firm but gentle pushes, she managed to get him in the shoe. His body squished out and pudge filled out the empty space leaving him just as fully sole-supportive as Avaros.

She stood up after tying her laces and took a few test steps, walking in a small circle. It was like stepping on squishy clouds, the micros’ bodies harmlessly sinking into the memory foam under her weight. Their bodies gave just enough lift for the tops of her paws to rest comfortably against the top of the footwear, and now she understood the unusual height of the shoes. The little critters’ lungs were a bit compressed and it was harder to breathe, but that didn’t stop them from sniffing as deeply as they could. They simply couldn’t get enough of that wonderful smell, and to their delight it was the only thing they could breathe.

Samantha looked up at Roy, and for the first time since she entered the store her tail wagged. Roy saw this and felt very pleased with himself. It wasn’t about making the sale, he’d gotten a chance to help someone and it felt nice. As Samantha reached down to pick up her old shoes, Roy reached out to stop her.

“I’ll take those off your paws, if you don’t mind,” he said, picking them up. The haze of odor was still lingering in them but he seemed unfazed. “We store the micros in shoes when they’re not in the boxes. Those are to take them home in, but ah…” he stopped to snicker, “I don’t think that will be necessary.” The hyena and dalamatian made their way out of the double-sets of doors and into the main area. As they made their way to checkout, they got to chatting, and they even agreed to meet up on another day. Samantha left the store in high spirits and walked her way home wearing her new shoes and sole inserts.

Cooper and Avaros were in heaven, the dalmatian’s incredibly odorous paws kneading and squishing over their bodies. The scent had invaded every fiber of their being and left them exhaling fumes with each breath. Their bodies practically molded to the shape of her paws (especially in Cooper’s case) and there was lifting and pressing down in just the right spot. They writhed around happily in the shoes, especially sensitive parts for them bumping and catching against the fabric. As the sensations continued, their bodies tensed up, it was more than they could bear, until…

Samantha paused as she felt something sticky against her socks. She stopped in her tracks, considering where the micros were and where she felt it, put two and two together, and felt her face warm up with blushing. They really enjoyed this. She thought about it and honestly, she didn’t mind. In fact, she liked the idea of someone liking something she had grown to dislike.

The two had stopped wriggling and were sucking in air between her toes frantically, catching their breath. The day had been quite a turnaround for her and she had honestly given up hope on addressing her paw problem. But here she had two micros that were so eager to sniff things up for her that they enjoyed it in the purest and most straightforward way possible.

Samantha walked a bit more cautiously as she made her way home, opening the front building door and going up the steps to her apartment. Unlocking the door, stepping inside, and then re-locking the door, the happy dalmatian made her way into her bedroom and sat down on her bed. She slipped her shoes off and the micros got a rush of fresh air, their lungs taking it in desperately out of habit. Her tail whapped happily against the bed at the lack of smell coming from her shoes and socks. To her, it was so bad that she commonly slept with her shoes on and this was the first time things had smelled relatively clean when she wasn’t actively washing.

By this point, the micros had recovered from their enjoyment. Samantha reached down into a shoe and lifted Avaros out, placing him on the bed. She grabbed for Cooper and with a bit of effort managed to pop him back out and place him next to Avaros.

“Sorry about the mess, Mistress,” said the fox sheepishly.

Cooper had already hidden his face behind his handpaws again and crossed his legs, trying to hide himself (which was difficult due to his weight). He was lucky that Avaros was still able to keep his composure around such a beautiful woman; the otter was much too flustered and a little embarrassed at his body’s reaction to be able to speak at the moment.

“We could clean that off for you, if you’d like,” offered Avaros. Cooper silently nodded as he continued to hide behind his hands.

The dalmatian’s cheeks glowed pink once more. She had vastly underestimated just how much someone could like paws. As she considered it, she started to notice the smell of her paws filling the room. Without the micros dutifully breathing in the scent for her, it was able to escape and linger. She had come to like the idea of not having to smell her own paws anymore, so she swung them up onto the bed and offered them to Cooper and Avaros.

Avaros jumped forward and buried his face against the spot where he’d made a mess. His little tongue dragged across the fabric of the sock and licked up the wet spot. Cooper was still hiding his blushy little face, and Samantha leaned her paw forward to rub over him with her toes.

“Come on Cooper, don’t be shy,” she said sweetly.

The otter’s ears perked up, her voice like velvet. She used her toes to roll him to a comfortable spot with his face against his own splotch.

“Thank you Mistress,” he squeaked, sticking his tongue out and licking just as eagerly as Avaros. As their tongues circled and cleaned their respective spots, their noses sucked in the odor greedily, faster than the paws could produce it. Samantha smiled as the smell of her paws faded with each deep inhale from her new little pets.

“Would you mind stopping for a moment, please?” she asked, and the two paused in their efforts.

Samantha pulled her paws to herself and grabbed the tips of her socks, letting the micros watch as she pulled them off and revealed her bare paws.

Avaros and Cooper had stopped noticing everything else besides the giant dalmatian’s soles. Her paws had spots not just on her fur, but asymmetrically splotching all over the dusty pink pads. The toes spread and curled, drawing them closer as if winding strings around her toes. The little ones soon found themselves shifting closer and then standing up, hugging themselves to her paws.

Samantha couldn’t help but giggle at their eagerness, not even having to ask about what she had planned. She carefully slipped her socks over them, trapping the two against her paws. This was met with grateful inhales, their noses moving all over the bare paw and vacuuming up the smell, barely letting any of it meet the fabric. Where their lips touched, she could feel them kissing gratefully. “You are such good boys!” she said, testing the waters a little bit. Her tail thumped the bed as this was met with a doubling of their efforts. She wasn’t used to having this kind of power over anyone’s situation, but she knew that she wanted to protect them and keep them safe. That their idea of safety just happened to be at her paws was a bonus to her.

She spent the rest of the evening fixated on her little pets, trying out different commands and being delighted to see them doing everything she asked as far as worshiping her paws was concerned. They didn’t have much room in her socks but they did the best they could. To her, the room smelled pleasant, but the lungs of the micros were filled to the brim with that overpowering paw odor, and they couldn’t have be happier.

Samantha stretched her legs out as the night wore on, letting herself drift off into slumber with the micros still eagerly pampering her paws from within her socks. As she finally fell into that hazy state where sleep rolls over the senses, a thought crossed her mind: tomorrow’s morning jog was going to be a lot more comfortable.