Application for Coraline Jones (Coraline, Neil Gaiman)

[braveexplorer]

((OOC: I'm playing Coraline based on the book, which is why she has a PB (Ariel Gade) rather than movie icons. Nothing against movie!Coraline, I just haven't seen the film yet. If you're reading this later and want to play Wybie or the movieverse version of anyone, PM me and we'll work something out.

Also, spoilers for the whole book.))It was a

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[ra_tilt_chimera]

Zel picked up the application for a moment and glanced from it to the small girl and back, as if he wasn't quite sure he was believing what he was reading.

Eventually, he asked, "Who is 'the other mother'?"

[braveexplorer]

Coraline looked up at him with a serious expression, trying not to seem too alarmed. He had proper eyes, at least, not buttons, which was probably another good sign.

"She steals people," she explained. "She lures them into her world to play games with them, and take away their hearts and souls and sew her black buttons into their eyes."

[ra_tilt_chimera]

Zel realized abruptly that a man made out of stone was probably going to frighten a little girl. Even one who, from what he was hearing, had faced more than her share of monsters. He knelt down to try to talk to her a bit more closely.

"I... see. And you sealed her? Locked her away so she couldn't affect your world anymore?"

[braveexplorer]

"That's right. I locked the door. Her right hand escaped and came after the key, but I tricked it into falling down the well and boarded it up."

She'd explained that on the form, but sometimes grownups needed to hear things twice.

[omg_sunflora]

"Oh my gosh! You're very brave!"

[braveexplorer]

"Thank you," Coraline said, because she didn't want to say anything silly like 'you're a talking flower'. It wasn't as though she hadn't met stranger people. "Somebody needed to be."

[omg_sunflora]

"I try to be sometimes, though it's tough to be brave by myself. I'm a LOT braver with friends."

[braveexplorer]

Coraline nodded. "It's easier to be when you're not alone. Being brave is supposed to be tough, though. It's only brave if you're scared and do it anyway."

[ringo_raver]

"What kind of name is Coraline?"

[braveexplorer]

This time she did jump, a little, even though she'd been trying very hard not to. The - whatever it was - was alarming, that was all, being so big and spiky.

She recovered, folding her arms and frowning up at it. "My name."

[ringo_raver]

"Well, it's a silly name!"

[braveexplorer]

"What's your name, then?"

[beets_r_god]

"Hello, small one." Dwight was trying to be kind. It didn't necessarily work. "Where did you get those paper clips?" He was always running out of paper clips.

[braveexplorer]

"My name's Coraline," Coraline explained, patiently. "I found them. They were just lying around." Her parents tended not to notice small things on the floor.

[beets_r_god]

"Did you ask permission before you took them?" It was Dwight's belief to start kids off on the path to true lawfulness. After all... it was a very slippery slope from stealing paperclips to embezzling money.

[braveexplorer]

"They were on the floor. I tidied them up." She was fairly sure her parents wouldn't mind this. They had boxes of hundreds of them.

[wrinklesintime]

"...the Other Mother?" Meg asked. "That... actually sounds really scary."

[braveexplorer]

Coraline nodded, emphatically. "She was. She wanted to keep me forever. Like a doll."

[wrinklesintime]

Meg shuddered, thinking of her brother, trapped on Camazotz. "How was she going to do that?" she asked. She didn't really want to know, but was nonetheless compelled to ask.

[braveexplorer]

And Coraline didn't especially like describing it, but she thought she ought to warn people if they asked. "She was going to sew black buttons into my eyes. That's her mark, I think, for all the things she makes. And then she'd take my heart and soul and keep the rest of me locked up forever."