curiously_cora | Out of Phase: Artefact discovered

There were several well trekked paths and one newly forged one, leading away from most of the huts created by human feet. And another created by smaller feet. There was one bunch of flowers, fourteen individual red and yellow flowers picked and left on a rock which was not particularly interesting. There was one noisy small blonde human. And then there was the boar minding its own business until something strange happened.

A pulse of bright white light came out of the jungle startling it, screeching the boar ran angrily towards the source. Crashing into something metallic, the boar grunted and gruffed at it turning as it shuffled in the dirt. The metallic thing was broken into pieces, snuffling at it the boar mouthed at pieces before swallowing a couple of smaller pieces. Making an unpleased noise it tried to cough, trampling the artefact and kicking pieces of it further away. Stumbling forward it dragged some pieces alongside with it as it carried on its grumpy journey.

The boar didn't know what it had done. And it wouldn't for long. Boars didn't tend to last very long on the island. Not with so many hungry mouths to feed.

And the small blonde human? She'd disappeared without trace.

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Coraline held her breath, looking at the big direwolf held his nose straight in front of her. Coraline made a face at the creature, hoping he wasn't going to try and eat the ghostly version of herself. She probably didn't taste that good, no matter what the Other Mother said.

"Hi! Hi!" Coraline said waving at Robb before she remembered. Not being able to haunt anyone sucked. That and being dead. Obviously. "Mister Stark you probably shouldn't touch that I'm- and you can't hear me. I really don't know why I bother."

Sure enough, Robb can't hear her. Grey Wind looks as though he might, but he can't smell, only the traces of her, and that confuses him more than a little.

Robb crouches down to get a look at the strange thing his wolf has discovered, but has no idea what it is. "Is this it? Are we to take it back to the compound for Dairine to put in one of her machines, is that it?"

Grey Wind is not sure.

Coraline sighed, hugging her knees to her chest and looking thoroughly miserable. She was tired and cold and hungry and really thirsty and she was dead. She didn't think that was supposed to be possible but it was. She just wanted to go home, well properly that is.

"I really don't think you should touch it, it just makes you dead." Coraline said making a face before looking at Robb curiously, letting out a sudden and loud. "Boo!"

Well, sometimes it paid to just try and haunt people.

He's bent down to pick it up just before her little attempt at haunting, so from Robb's perspective, what happens is that his hands close around a bit of broken metal, he starts to straighten, and Coraline Jones jumps out of nowhere going 'Boo'.

He doesn't look especially impressed. "What are you doing?"

Coraline let out a startled yell at Robb addressing her directly.

"You can see me?" Coraline asked curiously with wide eyes. Coraline touched her face before grinning. She wasn't dead! She couldn't be if he could see her. "You can see me! I'm not dead, this is brilliant!"

Coraline went to hug him enthusiastically and kept going, straight through him. Coraline stood, now behind Robb, and swore quite loudly. No, she was still dead.

Robb shivers in spite of himself; that didn't feel like anything at all but it seems like it should have. "That's too strange, don't do it. What happened to you?"

"I don't know, I think I'm dead. I mean, I'm all ghostly and no one can see or hear me. Except you I guess," Coraline said, making a face at the idea of doing that again. It was weird, it looked and felt weird. She definitely didn't want to do it again but she kept forgetting that she was... well, um dead. "I was exploring and then poof I'm a ghost. I think I'm a ghost. I didn't know ghosts got hungry though."

"I don't think you're a ghost," Robb says, though mostly that's only because he doesn't actually believe in them. "It's more likely to be some new kind of island strangeness."

"How do you know? I can't touch anything and no one can see me, I mean that's pretty much ghost territory right there. Although, most of the ghosts I knew were a bit more grey and blue than this." Coraline said, making a face at him. "Do you think so? Do you think it'll end?"

"Probably," Robb says, and not only to be comforting. "Think about it logically. How many strange things have happened that have turned out to be the island's odd doings, and how many ghosts have you encountered? One seems far more likely. But we should probably mention it to someone; you'll be missed if you havent' been already."

"Three," Coraline replied almost instantly. Even before the island Coraline had never had what some would call a normal or traditional childhood. "I've encountered three ghosts. So, I don't know I could be dead. If it was an island thing then... then wouldn't more people have become like me? No one else has not that I've seen. Not that I've been spying or anything."

"What, here? Other than Halloween," Robb clarifies, because that doesn't really count. All sorts of things happen then. "I honestly don't know, anyway, though in my experience dead people are rather more damaged. Bloody and missing limbs and the like." He stops himself, abruptly realising he's talking to a rather young girl. She doesn't need to hear about the bloody limbs. "I'll take this back to the IPD, in any case, and see if anyone else recognises it."

"No, at home. You didn't say I had to see the ghosts here." Coraline replied. She hadn't seen ghosts at Halloween, she'd seen men. Bad men but still men. She had managed to avoid most of the kinder monsters. "Not the Other Mother, not her victims. They just die. They looked normal too, mostly. They could float though."

Coraline couldn't. And she was hungry but that didn't rule it out. "Okay but- but don't lose it or give it to anyone else just in case it's something bad."

Out of Phase: Artefact discovered

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