The Padded Palace Act IV: Chapter 8
“Pssst…Ellie…pssst…” whispered Riri, using her pointer finger to jab her nursery mate in the cheek and causing her to stir. Sadly, her initial efforts proved futile as Ellie ignored her and rolled away with her blanket tucked around her shoulder.
Unfortunately for Ellie, Riri was not dissuaded by her dismissive snoring. Within seconds of turning to her side and facing the wall, she felt a pair of hands grip her upper arm and proceed to shake her with an annoying amount of vigor. “Do you mind?” she bemoaned without a hint of Little Space in her voice as she grabbed hold of her pillow and whipped it back.
Dodging Ellie’s blind strike, Riri watched as the pillow that was intended for her whammed Connor in the face instead. Her hand shot up to cover her mouth, preventing her own bratty snicker from escaping the confines of the nursery. Part of her wanted to taunt Ellie for missing but she knew that would only end in conflict. “Ellie,” she said, her whisper growing slightly louder, “Connor needs to ask you something.”
Repositioning the pillow under her head, Ellie’s tired brain made no effort to process Riri’s request. Pushing out her lower lip, she swatted her hand around behind her head in the direction of Riri’s voice as she groggily shouted, “Just lemme sleeeeeeep!”
“M-Maybe we should just let her sleep and ask tomorrow,” mentioned Connor, still slightly discombobulated from the blow to the head.
Riri, however, remained persistent. Crawling on top of Ellie, she straddled the sleepy Little’s hip and began to bounce up and down. Unsurprisingly, their mashing pampers created a cacophony of crinkles between them. “Nuh-uh, do you know how many naps she’s woken me from? Plus, she took Stacy’s side and helped pin you down. Ellie owes you,” she said, feeling a tad more vengeful than she’d like to admit. Moreover, while she didn’t verbalize it, she didn’t want this conversation to wait for a time when Stacy would be present; something that could potentially stunt the gain she made with Connor if Stacy were to meet his question with ridicule.
Unfortunately, Riri’s reasoning did little to quell Connor’s concern. Guilt set in as he observed Riri’s attempts to rouse Ellie, taken aback by the fascinatingly dissonant behavior she was showcasing. Only minutes ago, she had been engaged in a heart-to-heart with him over his kinky shortcomings, displaying the utmost patience and sensitivity to his plight. But put her back in a space with one of the other Padded Palace Littles and her mental maturity would immediately tumble backward. His guilt gave way to jealousy as he found himself secretly wishing that both she and Ellie would interact with him with the same sort of reckless abandon.
“Dis isn faiw,” whined Ellie, failing to keep herself from falling into Little Space as she struggled to squirm out from under Riri’s weight. Kicking her legs in disapproval, her grumpy eyes irritably darted between Connor and Riri, “Jus tell me wuh chu twos wans so I can go back ta seeps.”
A smug expression formed on Riri’s face. She may not have been as dauntless or as bratty as Stacy but she could still be quite prideful when getting her way. “I promise, this won’t take long. There’s something Connor wants to ask you,” she said, her words sparking the blush in Connor’s cheeks as he suddenly found himself in the hot seat.
Rubbing the back of his neck, Connor’s eyes studied the wavy folds of the blanket he was sitting on. Clutching the fabric in his fist, he pushed himself to make eye contact with Ellie in an effort to take his first step toward a bolder version of himself, “I don’t know how to get into Little Space on my own…and when I talked to Riri, she mentioned you were the quote-unquote resident expert, so I was hoping you might have some tips for me…or…something.” His volume dissipated as his sentence carried on. He unconsciously kneaded the blanket in his hands.
Rising as if brought back to life via resurrection, Ellie was now wide awake. Her smile seemed to double in size with each passing second as her head swiveled between Riri and Connor. “Well, it’s about time I started getting some recognition around here,” she said boastfully, her ego singling out and clinging to the “resident expert” comment. She may not have been the smartest bab in the nursery but when it came to shifting in and out of Little Space, few could rival her prowess; a product of her falling into the mental regression kink and frying her brain with hypnosis tapes at an impressionable age, “Okay, let’s start with the basics. The term ‘Little Space’ covers a wide range of ageplay mentalities, so how it feels is different for everyone. For instance, I tend to move between Little and Middle Space ages pretty fluidly, but I prefer my Little Space age to be somewhere between two and three whenever…possible…” Her words trailed off as Connor’s expression slowly became more dumbfounded. “You’re not getting any of this, are you?”
Shaking his head, Connor could feel his brashness receding. “Um…yeah. You’re gonna have to go back because you lost me at Middle Space,” he said, hunching his head close to his shoulders.
“Hey Connor, guess what?” said Ellie, skipping past Connor’s terminology befuddlement to address something significantly more pertinent, “You realize that you just regressed and you didn’t even notice, right?”
Flushing over Ellie’s comment, a confused Connor looked down at himself. He wanted to argue that Ellie must’ve been mistaken considering there was no obvious change in his mentality, though he wasn’t about to humiliate himself by proclaiming that he wasn’t Little with a thick diaper around his waist. “Um…I-I’m not sure…” he stuttered, looking to Riri for clarity.
“Ah! Ah! Right there!” said Ellie, scooching forward on her knees and squaring up with Connor, “As I said, everyone’s Little Space is different, which means the methods of getting there must also be different. And it’s so obvious that you fall in head first whenever you get shy or blushy.”
Shades of deep red descended upon Connor’s mug as he soaked in Ellie’s statement. He’d been called many things in his life but never had he thought of himself as an overtly bashful person. That being said, he couldn’t deny how sheepish his behavior had been. Although, in his mind, the reason for his demure demeanor was significantly different, “Th-That’s not the same! It’s not like I’m acting shy because I want to be. And of course, I’m blushing. This is embarrassing!”
“Exactly! It’s embarrassing, and being embarrassed makes you shy, and being shy makes you feel small,” refuted Ellie, compelling Connor to cower backward as she loomed over him, “Being Little doesn’t come out of a vacuum. You gotta stop fighting to subdue your reactions to everything and lean into what makes you vulnerable. That’s the only way to achieve genuine Little Space.”
“She’s right,” chimed Riri, swooping in behind Connor and placing a tender hand on his shoulder, “You told me you want to stop feeling ashamed of this, yeah? Well, I think you might be conflating the distress of shame with embarrassment of any kind, and that’s an unhealthy association.”
Sitting in silence, Connor contritely contemplated the world-shattering revelation that Ellie and Riri had dropped on him. Having spent much of his life avoiding humiliation at all costs, the concept of not only accepting embarrassment but leaning into it seems so bizarrely foreign. To his dismay, all this talk about his internalized relationship with humiliation had managed to coax those feelings out of him, which was made more perturbing thanks to the erection he could actively feel growing within his diaper. “I…uh…don’t know what to say,” he mumbled, a swarm of butterflies overtaking his tummy.
SMACK!
Without warning, Ellie's hands raised to meet Connor’s cheeks, cupping both of them with enough force to startle him out of his mental daze. “Then repeat after me: Me a big baby who wuv my diapees,” she said with a kind yet mischievous smile.
“What?! No,” said Connor, a line of crimson cementing itself on his nose and cheekbones as he pushed Ellie’s hands away on instinct.
Giggling over Connor’s tepid resistance, Riri happily jumped aboard Ellie’s train of thought, “Hehe! Why not? It’s just the three of us. Here, I’ll even go first! Me a big baby who wuv my diapees!” She grabbed her feet with both hands and rocked back and forth, teetering over the Little Space edge in hopes of dragging Connor down with her.
Sandwiched with Ellie on one side and Riri on the other, Connor felt as though he’d ingested one of those “Drink Me” potions from Alice in Wonderland, shrinking him down between the pair of doting Littles. He averted his eyes from their adoring gazes, wishing that he could bury himself beneath every blanket, pillow, and plushie in Ellie’s crib until he disappeared. Was that the feeling that Ellie was encouraging him to lean into? Fixing his mouth into a pout, he quietly muttered, “Me a big baby…w-who wuvs my diapees.” Steam may as well have been rising from his head with how rosy he had become.
“Oh, I’m sorry. Did you hear something, Riri?” asked Ellie sarcastically.
Playing along, Riri answered appropriately, “Hmmm…I think I did but it sounded so faint and squeaky. Must’ve been a widdwe mousey.”
Not one to enjoy having his temper tested, Connor's wounded pride had heard enough from the padded peanut gallery of Ellie and Riri. His hearing went dull and his vision seemed to blur as he forced himself to blurt out, “Me a big baby who wuvs my diapees!”
“Yay!” cheered Ellie, tackling Connor into a big hug and eliciting a childish giggle from the man who was supposed to be her caregiver, “See? Ish fun ta be blushy!”
Unable to stifle the laughter that seemed to spawn deep within his gut, Connor followed Ellie’s advice and did everything in his power to espouse the inherent silliness rising within his heart. He felt incredibly ridiculous as the mature portions of his mind fought to dictate his response, but those thoughts paled in comparison to the esoteric euphoria he got from allowing himself to play the fool. He wanted, nay needed to experience that feeling again. “Me a biiiiiiiiig baby!” he repeated, diving in for another dose of controlled humiliation, “Who wuvs my diapees!” A wide-eyed, innocent smile began to take shape as he snuggled into Ellie’s embrace.
“Yeth chus awe! Chus a big, big baby! Hehehe!” said Riri, letting herself fall on top of Connor and Ellie’s cuddle puddle as all three of them sank into Little Space together.
TO BE CONTINUED…