Gloating

A customer-mistress comes to gloat over me along the toepath. 'Just think, slave', she says, 'you will be spending the rest of your life confined here on this dirty, overgrown towpath, kissing the boots and shoes of passers-by and unable to even look up above their socks! Haha, don't you feel shame? Don't you feel anguish at your lowly predicament?'

I answer the gloating mistress-madam in the only way I can - with humility and respect, as befits a slave at her toepath mercy:

'Oh pray pretty mistress, if it pleases you pretty mistress-madam, this slave is indeed humbled at the prospect of his long life kissing the shoes and boots of his betters, madam, thanking you kindly, miss. Oh pray, miss, please may I kiss your boots, madam?'

She laughs at me:

'Haha, I suppose you better had, slave1 Kiss my boots!'

And with that, she shoves her synthetic, sheepskin-booted foot towards my permanently-confined face.

'Just think slave, you will be spending the rest of your life confined here on this dirty, overgrown towpath, kissing the boots and shoes of passers-by and unable to even look up above their socks!'

'Don't you feel shame? Don't you feel anguish at your lowly predicament?'

'Oh pray pretty mistress, if it pleases you pretty mistress-madam, this slave is indeed humbled at the prospect of his long life kissing the shoes and boots of his betters, madam, thanking you kindly, miss. Oh pray, miss, please may I kiss your boots, madam?'

'Haha, I suppose you better had, slave1 Kiss my boots!'

As the gloating customer-mistress has kindly pointed out, I am unable to look at her, or indeed any of my customers, above the sock!

I shall be kissing feet for the rest of my wretched life...

...the feet of my betters...

...of free persons, like her!

I'm just the toepath garbage at their feet!

My customers all, literally, look down on me

She leaves triumphantly...

...as I ponder my lowly fate