entrancelogs | [Open] What an extraordinary child...

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[Open] What an extraordinary child...

Who: Coraline Jones & OPEN TO ANYBODY!
Where: The Grounds, Your Bedroom Door, The Halls, The Dining Room
When: Early November
Rating: PG
Summary: Being a mansion busybody, and sampling sounds for spooktunes
The Story: (But first, mood music...)

Out and About

The grounds feel extra chilly these days, air crisp with all the pleasantries of autumn, and the forest edges along with some of the garden is shedding crunchy leaves this way and that. There's a distantly smokey smell too, that's impossible to pinpoint the exact source of, but it pleases Miss Jones immensely.

She wanders the grounds with a sense of open-minded purpose, wearing a slouchy wool cap and a cozy sweater underneath her bright yellow coat. It's not quite cold enough for snazzy gloves, which is just as well- easier to carry a handheld tape recorder, pointing it at scattered leaf piles just before giving them a hearty kick with her wellington boots. Coraline walks hard along the cobblestone pathways too, trying to put a little more deliberate weight in her footsteps, occasionally bouncing from foot to foot rhythmically as if playing on invisible hopscotch boards.

She bothers the vendors for a bit, knocking on empty turtleshells and strings of pretty glass beads, bowls of jangly trickets, poking about at their wares with absolutely no real intentions of buying or bartering. Once the faceless merchants have realized this, and she's had quite enough of their cold shouldering, Coraline moves on quickly, finding a branch with some leaves still attached (not poison oak!) to run along the fences, making a glorious racket. On the review playback, it's not quite as satisfying as she'd hoped. Maybe she should have thought to arm herself with fancier microphones.

Soon she spots someone else out here, probably minding their own business, or lost in their own thoughts, and hurries over wth the branch dragging behind her on the grass.

" 'Scuse me?" The girl pipes, waving mid-approach. "Hi there, uh... Are you busy, right now? Would you mind, um... holding this up for me, for just a second?" Turning the branch around so the leafy ends are facing her sound recorder, she smiles hopefully and makes a flimsy, demonstrating gesture. "Yeah. Give it a good rustle?"

Door to Door

There's an eerie sounding disturbance in the hall, off and on during the day. Maybe you've just been too tired or preoccupied to investigate it's source. But that's okay. The sound machine's about to come to you!

(Knock-Knock-Knock.)

Yep, that's the sound of smallish knuckles on your bedroom door. Did you perhaps forget to put the No Solicitations or Please Do No Disturb sign on the door handle today? Or is a mild distraction a most welcome visitor, right now?

This one might be a little impatient, piping up before you can quite make your way to the door, or yell at the drop-in to go away

"Hello?" Sounds precociously girlish, and not with any particular panic. Like there might be a wagon of Girl Scout Cookies involved? And there's the knock again, repeating. "Is anyone home?"

No cookies in the wagon, alas, though it's rigged with some kind of dated recording equiptment, wedged in alongside a tangle of wires hauled out of her closet, along with one too many odds-and-ends noisemakers. In front of it stands Coraline Jones, a blue-haired girl in a silvery soft sweater that's a couple of sizes too big and stripey neon leggings.

Hallway Sound Effects

Sounds like someone with far too much free time on their hands has raided the music room's percussion and hand-instrument cabinets.

And it sounds like that someone has assigned you a few of them, and has been innocuously tailing you for as long as you can bear to dismiss your shuffling footsteps accompanied by the rattle of maracas, or every turn of your head punctuated by slide whistle. She follows at just enough of a distance to duck into an open doorway or lean up against the wall beside a mirror, examining a chip in her clipped painted nails.

But Coraline's harmless mischief can probably only continue on for so long, before she's called out for being a general nuisance. Or until she can get one of her victims to crack a smile.

Wish to Table

It's on the later side of suppertime, and Coraline has just managed to snag herself a seat in the dining room, staring down at her plate with the usual sigh of indecision. Pepperoni Pizza sounds like a great idea, but she's already had that three times this week, and that annoying naggy voice in her conscience that sounds like her well-meaning father is reminding her of food groups and variety.

She heaves a sigh, and quietly grumbles 'Okay, Dad' under her breath.

"Hmmm..." She strums her fingers on the fancy tablecloth and peeks up and down the long table for some inspiration. "What do I want, what do I- Oh! A...Chicken Pot Pie?" Coraline requests, remembering a microwaved one that she used to help herself to on nights when her father made stuff like Creamed Kale with Goat Cheese, or Seafood Paella. "With no mushy peas, please." She adds, before the magic can complete it's thing. "Ooh, and extra crusty crust!"

Yum. That's perfect, and perfectly sized for her appetite with room for dessert, too.

But after a second marveling sniff of the air, her face pulls a grimace of disgust. Gross. Where is that coming from?

Her attention goes scurrying a few places down in curious horror as she stabs a fork into her pot pie, steam rising from the pierced crust.

"What are you eating?!" Coraline exclaims, eyes wide with revulsion.

"That looks, um..." (Gosh, don't be completely rude, Coraline. Even if that smell is turning your stomach) "...Different?"

Threaded | Flat

Mikan rushes to open the door - you can hear her trip and fall inside, so give her a moment. But she eventually manages to open it.

"Y-Yes?"

Castiel was more lost in his thoughts rather than minding his own business. He’d been contemplating the path that Beean had taken since their arrival here. He wonders if he’d survive here on the very rude flowers after they shooed him away. It was a terrible thing for a bee to be shooed away by its livelihood, that’s for sure.

The glorious racket of a branch dragging along a fence had him turning to investigate. He tilts his head, curious as ever. Was this another weird tradition or just a human making noise for the sake of noise?

“No,” Cas answers, he had all the time in the world. Or at least in this one. Lucky for Coraline, he didn’t ask questions. He accepted things as they were and as such, took the branch after her demonstration, repeating the rustling noise.

Naoki looks up at the question. He's sitting not too far from Coraline, mainly because he's trying to get himself used to being around people again. He's also getting used to food again and it seems he was unsuccessful this time around.

"I'm...not really sure?" He pokes at it with a pair of chopsticks in his hand, nose wrinkling. "I can't even remember what I was going for."

It seems you have to have something much more specific when asking for food.

"Is it bothering you? I can get rid of it."

He's pretty sure he's not going to eat it anyway.

It's kind of fun. Coraline's really fun, and as the other tails him and makes weird noises with a kazoo everytime he moves, Dustin finds himself laughing. Even when he stops and turns around as quickly as he can, only to see Coraline whistle innocently.

Dustin decides, right then and there, that Coraline is officially his new friend. It's the first time he's smiled since the Neverland event. He misses smiling, almost as much as he misses his other friends.

He walks with purposely loud footsteps, only to jump in the hallway, whip around a third (or fourth or sixth or seventh?) time to spot Coraline again.

"I have an idea," he announces. No use in pretending it's not you, Coraline, Dustin knows. "Do you want to do an experiment?"

Jesse’s very much lost in thought. She’s thinking about Wonderland, and everything that’s happened there since she first arrived. Finding her dad, and Barry, and so many people from her world (well, world adjacent, considering they’re from different Earths), being turned into a witch for a week. Ending up in Neverland. Getting stabbed. Poisoned. Her dad being turned into a cat.

And she hasn’t even been here 6 months. It’s a lot of weirdness that’s pretty weird even for her. But she has family here. Familiar faces. Friends. With them she can face anything.

Which is why she blinks in surprise when someone addresses her, a young girl with blue hair and a bright yellow jacket... with a branch? “Sure,” she says with an amused smile, doing as requested and taking a hold of the branch and holding it like it was demonstrated to her.

And then she’s rustling it with all her might.

At first, Dorian was sure he was going insane.

Does Wonderland usually torment people outside of events? It seems like it to Dorian. First there was the triangle incident with the opium (which he hasn't smoked since), then he found a piece of candy that turned him into the living dead for a day, and now he was being stalked around the mansion by a chorus of tambourines and whistles. WHY?! All he wanted to do was visit the library, was that too much to ask?

Dorian turned around for the third time that day. There, he found the same girl he saw the first two times, apparently minding her own business... Wait, was she following him?

"... May I help you?" He asks as he scans the girl for stray instruments.

The door opens slowly and the ghost peeks out.

"oh! miss Coralinejones! oh uh.... do come in....."

the door opens wide and the ghost gives her a little smile.

Mettaton has been standing out in the gardens for quite awhile now. They are a place of both calm and trouble for him now, and he's vaguely disappointed that they've been sullied like this in his mind. All well. It's better than going to the forest; he hasn't been able to go near that since he stopped Napstablook's plot.

It's cold out, and while he doesn't necessarily feel it, he is wearing a pink knit scarf wrapped around his neck. It looks a bit misshapen- clearly it was handmade, and not by particularly skilled hands. It sticks out in comparison to how sleek his jacket and pants look, but he has a hand idly feeling the small gaps and stray bits of yarn sticking out of it as he looks off into the distance, clearly lost in some manner of thought.

He pauses in his movements when he finally registers that someone is there with him, and turns a small, more withdrawn smile to Coraline. A different flavor to his usual flair. But all the same, he takes the branch from her.

"Coraline. It's good to see you. Are you recording sound bites?"

James is pretty quick to open the door when he hears who's there, and he leans against the frame with a big, fond smile on his face. She's likely learned by now that he doesn't live in his old room, since he's moved in with his wife. He hadn't been up to anything in particular, and he seems glad for the interruption of all the nothing he was doing.

"Well, well! If it isn't Coraline!" he says. "What brings you to my door today?"

He really adores Coraline, and is always happy to treat her visits like they're a special surprise. After how long she was gone from Wonderland, they still sort of are.

((super late sorry, but I've not been so good and I had this in my list!))

He's minding his own business, mostly, walking his dog (who grumbles slightly at Coraline's approach) when the girl appears. The request catches him out and he looks at her for a long moment, then shrugs and takes the branch.

"Collectin' noises?" he asks her, then lifts the branch up near to the recorder and - as requested - gives it a good shake. The leaves rustle together loudly and he lifts an eyebrow in Coraline's direction. "Good enough for ya?"

She might be surprised he acquiesced so easily, but he's dealt with far, far stranger and more dangerous requests than rustling a branch into a sound recorder... and from people not too much older than this girl seems to be.

Threaded | Flat

door to door

Out and About

wish to table

Hallway Sound Effects;

Out and About

no subject

Door to Door!! uwu

Out and about! (Let me know if this is too late of a tag in; it's fine if it is!)

Door to Door, about 10 million years late