The Art Of War

[curiously_cora]

Since Coraline had found herself locked in that room again, she hadn't been able to sleep properly. She'd sleep but her dreams were filled with red claws and hungry button eyes and something waiting for her at the bottom of a deep well. When faced with that prospect every night you could see why a ten year old explorer would rather sit up than turn

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[apocralyptic]

Coin had been listening, quite still on his own couch and so probably hard to see; not just to Coraline, but to the music box with its crooning about how this was the end-of-the-world news and the rustling of pages and the footsteps passing in the hallway- little sounds that meant that life was happening. It was a comfort.

Anyway, it was comforting until the girl who insisted on marrying a wizard started making plans to kill someone. Out loud. He wasn't sure if it was a particularly bad thing or not, but the inherent problem was not one that could be allowed to stand.

"No one will be fooled," he said, sitting up straighter, "if you go talking about fooling her."

[curiously_cora]

"I don't want to fool anyone else, just her." Coraline said seriously, bookmarking The Art of War before picking up the book about Cohen the Barbarian. Apparantly he lived on a planet that was balanced on elephants, which were in turn balanced on a turtle. Amazing. Coraline looked up and peeered around the room, seeing Coin. She hadn't noticed him before. "You're very good at sneaking, do you think you could teach me?"

[apocralyptic]

"I am?" This was news to Coin, who'd never really tried to hide before. In this dimension there was no one he felt the need to hide from, and back on the Disc it wouldn't have done any good even if he could have brought himself to try it.

And, with that thought, he shook his head. "No. Not even if I knew how. I really hate killing people."

[curiously_cora]

"Yes, I didn't notice you were there." Coraline said, frowning when he said he wouldn't teach her. "I don't think she counts as people."

Coraline supposed she should tell him. It was only fair. Even if he wouldn't teach her how to sneak. "I think the other mother is going to come here and try to kill me and possibly all the other children. She's not here yet, I don't think anyway but just in case I thought you should know."

[apocralyptic]

"I wasn't doing anything special," he said, rather sullenly, lest Coraline think he was withholding something he actually did know rather than something wholly hypothetical. "Just listening. Maybe you should do more of that. Now who's this other mother and why would she want to do that?"

[curiously_cora]

"Because she lives off children's souls," Coraline said, making a face. "I do listen!"

[apocralyptic]

"No, you don't," said Coin firmly. "Not properly. You just hear." It wasn't Coraline's fault, really. Maybe you had to have a vast pit of silence in your head before you could need to fill it enough to really listen. Or maybe all normal people had the silence, and what you needed was to know it was there because it had been filled, once. Either way, he'd gladly have let her have it if it meant he didn't have to carry it anymore.

He didn't respond to the "children's souls" bit, mostly because he didn't quite understand it. It didn't seem to him that they'd be at all nourishing, certainly not enough to maintain a being of any power on nothing else. Especially if you killed them.

[curiously_cora]

Coraline pulled the book close to her chest. A shield against his words. He was always so mean to her. "I thought- I thought I did," Coraline said, shrinking in her chair away from him. "How do you do listen?"

[apocralyptic]

He saw Coraline shrinking away, but he didn't understand that, either. He had no power here, no one to speak to him; how could he be at all threatening here?

"You can't have anything to say," he said hollowly, staring now at nothing. "Even if you want to say something, because it's too quiet in your head and it isn't right. You have to want to listen more than anything ever because then you might not have to think that maybe there isn't really any you at all."

He fell silent, then, with a slightly choked sound. He had, he realized, more to say, but it was too much and it had all clogged up like a ketchup bottle on the way to his tongue.

[curiously_cora]

Coraline held the book closely to her chest, the silver key digging into her. Coraline listened to him carefully. She didn't think she was full of silence or quietness. The thought of no her, no Coraline upset her a little. It sounded like forgetting.

"But there is a me," Coraline said softly, it was the one thing she clung to. She could disappear into her own mind and live another life but at the end of it she would remember who she was and she would be Coraline again.

[apocralyptic]

"Good," Coin managed, past the block. It was a little hoarse and a little high-pitched, but it was out there. Maybe he was getting better at talking. "Then keep that. It's more important than listening like me- you don't want to do that."