Chapter 2: Being the part
Penny’s first day in the park was magical; even after leaving work, the smile on her face persisted as if it was still painted onto the actress. Getting home later that night, Penny found herself excited even just thinking about going into work the next day, reminiscing about just how wonderful it felt to perform with Tim. Taking a few moments to wind herself down, trying a few exaggerated deep breaths as she let her smile settle into a contented smirk, Penny slowly attempted to pull herself back into a professional, adult state of mind. “Ok, Calm down Penny. Sure, today was amazing, and sure you can’t wait to get back there tomorrow, but not every day is going to be that great, right? I mean work is work, tomorrow might even be awful, or boring, and definitely not amazing at all...” Despite her attempts, Penny couldn’t shake her giddiness though, knowing on some level that her next day at work was going to be just as if not better than her expectations. What she didn’t know and would learn quite quickly though was that while it’s true most jobs do tend to lose their luster over time, working for Wonderland would only seem to get better by the day. The same feeling she felt the first shift, the ‘magic’ she half-jokingly called it, only seemed to increase with each time she got into costume, and in no time at all she was in love with her work.

As her first day turned into her first week, and so turned into her first month, Penny began to feel at home being guided by her owner’s strings, loving her time performing on stage and even simply when Tim was sporadically toying with her to entertain the crowd. Though she couldn’t quite pin why, she found herself perfectly at ease when she was out in the park, as if she didn’t have a worry in the world beyond being a good puppet and making people happy. The whole thing was intoxicating; each time she heard the crowd applause at the end of a performance, or even just seeing she made some kid smile at Tim’s expressive puppeteering, her heart skipped a beat. More than that though, she never did get over how Tim looked at her when she was all dolled up in her costume: something about his genuine smile when he played with her on stage or even just looked down at her from where he held her strings made Penny feel warm and fuzzy inside. It seemed like a mix of pride for a doll he crafted with his own hands, as well as a tender love for the wooden girl even if she was just a toy. Sure, at the end of the day when the costumes came off they knew that was just their act, the roles they played and the story they told, but when they were in the park together it felt real: Penny really was just a puppet, his puppet, and her owner took great care of her.

When they weren’t in the park and playing their parts though, something interesting began to happen between the pair: Despite being back in their right minds, Penny was surprised that with time she found herself getting closer with Tim, becoming more than just ‘puppet and puppeteer.’ Though it took a few days for the pair to warm up to each other, (Tim’s usual shyness still rushing back to him each time he carried his puppet off stage and the ‘magic’ wore off,) the two found themselves chatting a little more each day after their shift was done. Slowly opening up to each other over that time, talking and joking about their performances over the day, it didn’t take long for the two to get friendly with one another. After a week or two of working together, Penny was the one to make the first move, pushing past Tim’s initial nervousness and asking him if he wanted to hang out after work one day. Though he was a bit surprised, Tim was actually quick to agree, and one fun night out later, Tim’s demeanor around Penny lightened up almost immediately. In what seemed like no time they stopped being just coworkers that happened to have been paired together and started being actual friends.

It was only natural that the two would form some kind of bond given the intimacy of their day to day work, but in the weeks following that first hangout, it was clear that their connection was more than a mere exposure effect. Beyond their mutual obsession for Wonderland Studios, Tim having an embarrassing amount of toys and merch himself, it turned out that they had a decent amount in common: similar senses of humor, a love for cheesy movies, even a shared favorite pizza place just outside of town. Quicker than either of them expected, the two got to know each other incredibly well, regularly grabbing dinner together after work, getting drinks on the weekends, and eventually even having movie nights over Tim’s place, a small apartment in a complex owned by the park. Though Penny starter her time at Wonderland not even realizing she’d be paired with a partner, she now couldn’t imagine what her life would be like without her puppeteer only a few weeks later.

On one night like any other, almost two months since they had started working together, the two of them found themselves on opposite ends of Tim’s couch as they chatted over a Wonderland animated movie. Nights like these were almost common for them at this point, the pair hanging out and talking with a movie on in the background, joking freely as they chatted about their day. Things seemed normal, but amidst a loll in their lighthearted conversation, a few moments of quiet as she watched the movie, Penny found herself completely caught off guard as she heard Tim speak up. “By the way, Pen, this is a weird question but be honest: Do you ever, I don’t know, have dreams about work when we’re not there?”

Almost choking on her drink as she heard the question, Penny stifled a nervous laugh before looking to her partner. “Um, maybe sometimes, yeah…where did that come from?” For a second, the two laughed at themselves, Penny quick to take a sip of her drink as she thought about the question. If she was honest, she did, but for her it was more than just sometimes: Even since her first week at work, Penny found herself daydreaming about her and Tim’s performances, more than once finding herself humming to the tune of a song as she almost instinctually went through her dance routine in the kitchen. That was just the beginning of things though; With each new shift she worked at Wonderland, her daydreams only began to seem more real, Penny occasionally feeling the tug of an invisible string her while home alone, if only for a few seconds. That wasn’t necessarily why Tim’s question caught her off guard though: Recently, for the past week or so, Penny had found herself having vivid dreams almost every night. She could remember each one clearly, as if they were actual memories of hers, unable to think of anything else on her way to work each morning. Though each night was different, one theme was the same throughout all of them: In each dream, Penny wasn’t just in her costume as a puppet, she was a puppet.

It had all started with her first dream from the week before: Though she didn’t know why or how, Penny found herself dangling limply from a stand in the toy store they performed in front of at work. At first, everything around her seemed so big, but it didn’t take long for her to realize it was just her that was small, the wooden puppet only standing a foot tall. She didn’t have time to panic though, feeling as a pair of hands took her marionette controls from above her head and lifted her from her rack. Carried through the store and over to a table, the small redhaired puppet felt as a young boy looked down at her with a smile and clumsily tugged at her strings, having her jump up and down on the table as her painted expression looked towards him, her limbs flailing loosely with each hop. He played with the puppet for what felt like an eternity, posing her and toying with her until an unseen voice called him to go, the boy dropping her and leaving her sprawled out in a pile on the table. Waking up in her bed the next morning, sprawled out under the covers in the same pose that her kid had dropped her, Penny shot straight up, needing a moment to remind herself she wasn’t really a puppet. What concerned her though wasn’t the strange nature of the dream, or how real it felt, but instead that it wasn’t a nightmare, not even close. The sensation of being played as a kid’s toy made her heart skip a beat the same way it did when she performed. She loved it, the feeling carrying with her as she went to work that day.

Each night after that, the second and every dream following had one more constant in a sea of variables: they all had Tim in them. Each dream seemed to pick up where the last left off, almost as if they were telling one long story: Penny was lifesized again, though still very much an inanimate plaything. Through her dollish eyes, Penny spent her dreams living the life of Tim’s puppet. She watched and felt as Tim performed with her as usual, the wooden girl being puppeted as gracefully as ever, but what really captured her imagination was what happened after their performances. Some of her dreams took place entirely after Tim was done performing for the day and had taken the wooden girl home, though in this case home was his character’s workshop. He would put her down from under his arm onto the bed, talking to her sweetly as if she was a real girl, and clean her up as he undid her strings for the night. More often than not, she’d end up carried around by Tim as he went about his night, feeling as he toyed and danced with her throughout the evening, until ending up propped up on his work bench as decoration for the room. The whole time, the one thing Penny couldn’t get over though was the warmth she felt from her owner: in her dream from just the night before, Tim was reapplying some paint to Penny’s smooth wooden form. The puppet’s clothes were cast on the bed, the bare wooden girl watching as Tim delicately touched up the paint on her lips before stepping back with a satisfied smile on his face. “Perfecto,” he said with a smirk, kissing his doll on the forehead before heading to bed. If Penny could melt, she would have. For the rest of the night, sitting still where she was placed like a good doll, all she could think about was how much she wished she was a real girl so she could return the kiss he had given her. She loved her owner, that much she couldn’t deny.

“I don’t know, I’m just asking I guess. So you haven’t had any weird dreams recently?” she heard Tim speak up, pulling her out of her memories and back to the couch next to him. Trying to hide her flushed expression at the thought of her dream, Penny nervously replied. “Well, I guess once or twice I did have a dream I was really your- I mean a puppet. But it was silly, too into my work I guess.” The pair laughed slightly together, with another short pause in the conversation as they both looked to the movie playing to buy some time. After a moment though, Tim spoke up again. “I actually had a dream like that too… It’s kind of weird, but we were in my workshop, or I guess ‘Tim the Toy Maker’s workshop.’ You were a puppet, like a real puppet, and I was working on you... I remember it so clearly, I was fixing you, painting on your usual red lips from the costume, and then I-“ stopping dead in his tracks, Tim pursed his lips as if he was trying to catch his final words in his mouth. With her blush returning, Penny looked to him. “And then you what, Tim?” After another awkward pause, Tim blurted out “And nothing, then I went to bed, that was it.”

Quick to change the subject, Tim and Penny went back to chatting as usual, but as she nervously pulled at her redhaired braid, she couldn’t help but think about what Tim had said. ‘He’s having those kinds of dreams too I guess.’ She wanted to ask him so many things, if he thought they were having the same dreams, what he thought it meant, how it would all even be possible, but the one question that rose to the surface of her mind over and over was a much more straightforward one: ‘Did he feel the same amazing way I did in his dreams too?’ If she was being honest, both in and out of her dreams, she had developed a bit of a crush on her puppet master, and if she was being really honest, she wished he was holding her close right now instead of the two having an open couch cushion of space between them. She had to admit, at first she thought she was just wooed by how gracefully he danced and played with her in the park, but her affection really did go further than that: she liked him as Tim, not just her puppeteer. Shaking it off, Penny looked back to the movie that was playing. ‘Puppets don’t date their owners, dummy.’ More than that, the idea of dating a coworker and something going wrong would be bad enough as is, let alone if your job involved being that coworker’s puppet every day. Glancing over to Tim across the couch though, she couldn’t help but feel as warm as when he kissed her forehead in her dream, Penny’s professionalism clearly not being enough to suppress what she felt. For now, she was going to keep her crush to herself though. Work was going well, they were doing well. With a content grin, Penny mused to herself as she took another sip of her drink.
‘And at very least, I’ll have dream-Tim to play with his puppet until I work up the nerve to ask him out.’


The following morning, Penny sat up in bed with a disappointed look on her face. She had gone to bed excited to see where her larger-than-life dreams would take her this time, maybe even another kiss or two from her owner if Penny was a good doll, but instead she found herself confused; Waking up from a dreamless sleep, she couldn’t remember a thing. At any rate, she found it odd that she didn’t have another strange, vivid dream like the nights before, but what really surprised her was how much she found herself missing the warm feeling she got as Tim’s puppet; even if it was just a dream, she really did miss being Tim’s puppet. ‘Well, I guess I’ll just have to settle for the real thing,’ she mused to herself with a reassured smirk, climbing out of bed and getting ready to live out her dream in the park today.

By the time she got to the park, Penny was excited as ever, if anything a bit more eager to see Tim than usual. Making her way through the park in a path she could walk blindfolded, she found her way to the hair and make-up department to get ready for the day. After another remarkably quick and detailed transformation into a puppet, Penny was fully costumed and ready for Tim to take her strings. Almost skipping back into the hub, she glanced around to the various costumed characters surrounding her, but there was no sign of Tim. ‘Tim the Toy Maker, Tardy? I’m gonna have to tease him for that after work,’ she joked to herself, already in a good mood. Walking to their usual tunnel leading to the toy shop, Penny sat down on a bench to wait for her puppeteer, and only a few minutes later she saw him walking in the tunnel’s direction and twirling Penny’s marionette controls in his fingers.

At the site of her owner, looking over his costume, Penny felt an interesting sensation course through her. It was more than butterflies in her stomach upon seeing her crush, but instead the feeling was more akin to what she felt out in the park: ‘the magic.’ She couldn’t pin why, but she felt the need to start her puppet act now, even if it was only for Tim to see. In her seat, Penny felt as she playfully slumped, her arms and legs bowing outwards aimlessly as her head tilted slightly to the right, going limp as any doll would be if they were left there. A second later, her dollish smile kicked in, the girl now indistinguishable from how she acted out in the park: just a puppet. Something about it all just felt right, almost as if she was picking up where her dreams left off, Penny not even trying to fight it.
‘Well, let’s just see what Tim does when he finds his doll laying around.’

As Tim neared the tunnel, Penny had to keep herself from giggling as his eyes landed on her. With a warm grin and cocking his head to the side slightly, Tim spoke up. “So thaaat’s where I left my Penny. You know for a doll you sure seem to wander off a lot.” Approaching the girl, Tim picked up Penny by her underarms as if she was nothing, holding the puppet at eye level as she dangled in his grasp. Penny kept up her act, her eyes landing on his as her head lolled to the side. With a warm smile, Tim spoke up to the doll. “As beautiful as ever. Now come on Pen, we have some people to entertain.” Penny melted at hearing those words: she wasn’t sure why she was so committed to her act before they even entered the park, let alone why Tim as so willing to play along, but she didn’t care. “He called me beautiful?!” She was used to him complimenting her when they were out in the park, but that was always for the benefit of other people, ‘all a part of the act.’ Now though, it was just them alone, leaving Penny to wonder if that was Tim or his character talking as she felt herself carried by her owner’s strong hands out to the park.

Still a bit flustered, Penny watched from her dangling gaze as Tim carried her through the tunnel door, crossing the street and stepping up to the stage in front of the toy store. Instead of dropping her to the edge of the stoop like he usually did though, Penny felt as he sat down himself and pulled her onto his lap. Feeling as Tim lifted her chin to look out to the crowd, the pair had already had a few interested eyes looking to Penny. She couldn’t break her puppet act if she wanted to, the magic of the park taking over, but as Penny felt Tim take her one arm to wave at the crowd, his other hand wrapping around her waist to pull her close, the doll couldn’t help but blush a little.

Feeling the warm of her owner as he held her close, the eyes of the crowd looking towards her with intrigued smiles, and the familiar feeling of Tim attaching her strings to her arms, legs, and head, something clicked in Penny’s mind. What she was feeling was more than just her usual act: it was the same warm feeling she felt in her dreams, the feeling she had missed so much the night before, and with that feeling came a familiar state of mind that Penny eased into without so much of a fight. ‘I really am a puppet, Tim’s puppet. I’m a good doll, I make kids smile when they toy with me, I make our audience smile when I dance, and most of all, I make my owner happy.’ At that, Penny felt as the last of her strings were attached firmly, Tim standing up and pulling her into the air as well by her marionette controls. This time though, it wasn’t just her moving her body to follow the strings; they really were holding her up, the puppet dangling an inch or so off the ground as she swayed gently by her strings.

The idea that it should hurt being pulled into the air by just a few strings didn’t occur to Penny as she smiled out at the crowd, not feeling even a twinge of pain as her owner slowly set her feet back on the ground. Afterall, Penny could remember plenty of times from her dreams where she was left hanging by just her strings, and it never bothered her then, why would it bother her now? “Visitors, traveling folk, kids of all ages; for any and all who love a good show, Penny the Puppet is about to begin her act! Accompanied by her humble puppeteer of course.” As Penny watched a decent sized crowd begin to form around them, feeling as Tim made her curtsy and wave to members of the audience as more joined in, the warmth she felt in her dreams only reached an apex as she heard Tim whisper in her ear. “Showtime, doll.”

All at once, Penny felt as she was tugged along, Tim making her walk along the edge of the crowd just like the usually began their acts together. Just as before, her movements were entirely Tim’s puppetry though, not even supporting her own weight as he puppeted her along as elegantly as usual. As familiar music began to play from under the stage, Penny felt as she was made to spin, beginning her dance to her master’s tune. With each passing second she danced, Penny felt as alive as an inanimate puppet could be, the warmth she felt building with each passing second. What Penny didn’t notice though was as she danced, changes began to move over her whole body. Though her constant motion made it near impossible for anyone in the crowd to notice the at first subtle changes as they happened, the girl’s costume became less and less a costume by the second: with each spin Penny was made to do, her skin took on the polished, smooth tone of wood. Where before woodgrain was painted onto her light skin, her arms and legs began resembling actual wood that had instead been painted to look real. At her joints, her body slowly began to develop visible ball joints each time she moved, the dark outlines of the seams becoming more real by the second. Penny could hear slight pops at her ankles, knees, elbows and wrists as all this happened, but she could hardly care: the only thing on the puppets mind was how much she wanted to please the crowd and her owner.

As her dance picked up, almost reaching its finale, Penny felt as the changes moved up her chest and to her neck. Washing over her, her chest became the texture of soft wood just like her appendages, leaving her torso resembling the smoothed over body of an articulated doll. Finally, reaching her face, she felt as her make-up truly became a painted-on smile, her lips freezing in her usual dollish smile while the seams going from the corners of her mouth down to her chin became real as well. With one final swell swoop, the changes moved passed her eyes, the doll not even blinking as her exaggerated blue eyes became a permanent expression on the puppets face, the changes finally stopping as her hair became an array of thin, carefully woven yarn that at a distance could pass for real hair. Feeling as the music reached its end, Tim dipping the doll once more to curtsy at the crowd as thunderous applause reached her wooden ears, the transformation was over: over the course of a single dance, Penny had gone from a girl pretending to be a puppet to a wooden puppet that looked like a real girl. The thing is though, as Penny bowed one more time, her mind seemed to have picked up where her dreams had left her the night before last as even she believed that she was always just the puppet she was now.

As usual, the end of the performance was met with a number of audience members coming up to Tim with an array of questions, most pertaining to whether Penny was a real girl or not, only this time there was little discussion to be had once they got close up close. Penny, swooning as Tim pulled her onto his lap once more, felt as she was shown off to a number of voyeurs, each examining the craftsmanship of the wooden doll. “Wooow, she’s amazing! Where does Wonderland even get props this realistic?” One woman asked, Penny feeling as a small hand lifted her chin and looked into her painted eyes before Tim chimed in. “I actually made her myself actually; she’s an amazing toy and a stunning performer though, isn’t she?” Biting her lip with a bit of heat in her eyes as she let Penny’s gaze loll off the side once more, the woman spoke up. “You can say that again.”

The rest of the day was spent as if it was any other day at work for the pair: Tim toyed with Penny playfully to the entertainment of people passing by, showed off his prized possession to anyone who would stop and examine her, and after a while would perform with his puppet once more to the joy of both Penny and the crowd. The whole time though, not once did a worry enter the puppet’s wooden head; to Penny, this day was just like any other day since her owner had begun performing with her a few weeks back, and she loved every second of it. Finally, as the sun began to go down and the people walking up and down the street began to thin out, Tim let out a yawn before sitting Penny to straddle his lap facing him. The puppet would have blushed if she could, feeling as her owner rested his free hand on her waist as he undid her strings. As he undid the last one atop her head, the puppet drooped forward without her master’s support, stopping as her chest bumped against his while her red wooden lips ended up pressed to Tim’s neck. Even if she didn’t have one, the puppet felt like her stomach was doing backflips, hearing Tim chuckle as he lifted the doll off him. “Trying to repay that forehead kiss I gave you the other night, aren’t you Penny?” Tucking the puppet under his arm, the wooden girl barely weighing a thing now, Tim made his way back to the green door across the street, reentering the tunnels to end his day.

As he closed the door behind him, Tim felt himself settle back into his usual relaxed demeanor, leaving ‘Tim the Toy Maker’ in the park behind him. Shrugging off the long day of work, he began to make his was down the hall with Penny still under his arm. He couldn’t pin why, but today felt different that the others, even if nothing had really changed. It was his same usual routine after all: wake up, grab something to eat, get to work, get into costume, preform with Penny… At that, he stopped in his steps. Taking a moment to pause, he lifted the wooden girl from under his arm, pressing Penny against him with one arm while the other took her gently by the hair to lift her face from his chest. He didn’t expect what to see: Penny was still the same wooden toy he had come to know, her bright blue eyes unwavering. Looking with a grin as his puppet smiled back just like she always did, he couldn’t help but think something was different about his toy today. Ever since he had started working at Wonderland, he had been assigned the prop he held in his hands, Penny being ‘the puppet he made himself and that he performed with outside of his toy shop each day,’ or at least that was the story his boss told him before giving him the puppet. He wasn’t sure if she plucked Penny out of some storage room or if she was made specifically for him, but regardless, he connected with the toy immediately. Since that point, he had stopped seeing her as just a piece of wood and more so something he really cared about. He was embarrassed to admit it, but he had even developed a bit of a crush on his doll, getting a warm feeling in his chest even just looking into her bright blue eyes. He even found himself dreaming about her each night for the past week. It almost felt like Penny was a real girl, not just some dumb toy, a girl that- “Ahem? Am I interrupting you two love birds?”

Jumping slightly as he dropped Penny the puppet to the floor in a heap, quick to scoop the doll back up in his grasp with both hands so that she was hanging forward over his forearms, Tim looked past the puppet to where he saw his boss Janet standing with a grin on her face. Giggling slightly at the display, she spoke up. “Tim the Toy Maker, you dog, did I just catch you making lovey-dovey eyes at your puppet?” Almost stuttering on his words as he replied, Tim shot back: “No! I just… No Janet, it’s not like that.” Janet sauntered towards the pair, looking to Penny with a knowing smile as she slid a finger into the doll’s string hook atop her head and lifted her to meet her gaze, only to drop her limp once more in Tim’s grasp. “Relax Tim, I’m just kidding around. But what were you saying? What’s it like then.?” With a little more confidence now, Tim looked to her boss. “Well, it’s going to sound a bit weird, but Penny felt a bit, well different today. Alive even. Ha, maybe it’s just the magic of the park I guess.”

Patting Tim on the shoulder, Janet kept up her coy tone. “Well, you’re right, that does sound a bit weird Tim. Maybe we should post you somewhere else around the park for a little bit? See if that helps everything get back to normal.” In unison, Penny in her head and Tim aloud, the two shouted “No!”, Tim quickly following up with “I mean, nah, that’s alright. I like my post in front of the toy shop.” Beginning to walk down the hall back towards the hub, Janet looked over her shoulder before picking up her usual high-speed pace. “She’s a puppet, Tim. She’ll be waiting right there where you left her regardless. Now put her away and call it a day, ok?” Though Tim didn’t see, Janet shot Penny a wink, disappearing down the tunnel. A moment later, the pair were alone in the hall again, Tim sighing as he gave the doll in his arms a slight hug from behind. “Don’t worry Pen, I’m not going anywhere.”

In that moment, the hug and reassuring words were more than enough to set Penny worries of being abandoned at ease, but as Tim began his walk over to one of the storage rooms near-by, some new doubts began to invade the edges of her mind. Stepping through the doorway, the small room was filled with a dozen various animatronics and even some puppets like her; some seemed like they had been there for months, others having just been put there earlier that night. Walking up to an empty storage case, Penny saw that beside them was a lifesized wind up doll, the toy being bent over at the waist as if waiting for someone to wind the key sticking out of her back. Reluctantly, Tim reattached Penny’s strings, turning her to face him before hanging her on the large display rack. Dangling off the ground, Penny was about eye level with her owner now, who looked to her with a reluctant smile. “Hate to leave you here, Penny, but I’ll be back soon, ok?” Giving the doll a kiss on the forehead, Tim backed away slowly, still looking to her as the doll swayed slightly. Eventually reaching the door, Tim hesitated for another moment before hitting the light switch by the door, the lights of the storage room flicking off one by one until the only light in the room was a small array of moonlight trickling in from a high up air vent. ‘Goodnight, Tim,’ Penny thought, missing her owner already and hoping she wouldn’t end up collecting dust like the others around her.