It was a puppet. A mannequin. A doll.
Whatever anyone wanted to call it, Jeff had found it one day when investigating what had more than likely fallen into, rather than invaded, his Imag-I-Nation. It was a pale, sickly white, with limp arms and legs and a blank, expressionless face. But Jeff sensed something different about it. To him, everything had a soul. Especially in this world. So it deserved to see the wonder he lived in every day.
Taking the chance, he scooped the dummy up in his arms and carried it to a grassy field, some distance away from the forest he had found it in, and placed his hand over its forehead, attempting to bring life to the object.
What happened next surprised him greatly.
Materializing next to the mannequin was what appeared to be a human body. In a matter of minutes, lying next to the limp dummy was a living, breathing, human female. Her eyes shot open and she immediately moved to a sitting position, and Jeff was able to get a better look at her: wavy chocolate brown hair that reached past her shoulders, sparkling green eyes with dark circles around them, giving her a sort of smoky-eye look, and full, smooth, dark pink lips, all on a face and body of pale flesh. Her form fitting white dress seemed to blend in with her skin color, and her bare feet wiggled unconsciously in the grass. She appeared no older than twenty-two.
Turning her head to meet his gaze, she scrambled back a ways, but slowly crawled back over, staring at him. It wasn't a creepy stare, rather one of curiosity.
"Where did you come from?" was all Jeff could muster. In response to that, the girl pressed a long, thin finger to her mouth, before pointing it at the dummy lying in the grass. He was astonished, to say the least.
"Wai-wai-wai-wait," he stumbled over his own sentence trying to make sense of everything. "You came out of a doll?"
The girl shrugged. Jeff figured she obviously wasn't one for words.
Still, he watched her reach out to the form of the dummy, effortlessly pulling out a white tag on a string from the inside of the wrist.
Jeff suddenly remembered- he made this mannequin when he was younger. One of the dead giveaways for that memory was that, written in his handwriting on the tag, was the word "Mandykin".
He almost chuckled to himself. "Now where in the world did I come up with that name?" he asked himself in a joking manner. But all kidding aside, he looked at the girl again. "So… you must be my Mandykin."
Her lips curved into a small smile as she nodded.
But then he realized something. Constantly calling her "Mandykin" would get tiring and troublesome. So what was an alternative?
Shifting in her seat with a rather charming twinkle in her eyes, she waited for Jeff to say something else. Noticing her staring at him, she blinked.
He found it strangely adorable.
"Well, how 'bout I just call you 'Mandy' for short?" he suggested. If anything, the girl's smile seemed to brighten as she nodded, quite enthusiastically to say the least.
Jeff chuckled at her response. "Guess I might as well show you around and find you a place to stay," he mused, motioning for Mandy to follow him. Skipping to his side, she laced her fingers through his as she walked with him.
That simple gesture brought a grin to the enigmatic man's face. He was now starting to realize that something that he had built himself was finally alive.