Colour Challenge 43 - Ghost White

I'd recently developed the avatar I used for this colour, so that was a lucky chance and no further work required on the outfit. But an even luckier chance came when a friend showed me the *Cica* art installation by Cica Ghost (yes, really!), hosted by the LEA (Linden Endowment for the Arts). The installation won't be around forever so if you want to visit, I'd advise you to go soon. The environment is amazing, its features are entirely black within a stark white world and made up mostly of flat-prim animated drawings - stick people, open framework buildings, trees and butterflies blowing in the wind. It was the perfect opportunity to show off my avatar and I worked on this last week, in case the exhibit disappeared, which is partly why my Cosmic post was so late.

My avatar is a Shinigami, which is a Japanese death spirit - in Western terms, akin to the Grim Reaper, except in our folklore there is only one of him. But in my favourite TV series Supernatural, they adopted the Japanese approach and have Reapers (plural) as a kind of benign monster, actually performing a valuable service of guiding the dead so that they don't remain behind and become lost, embittered ghosts. My Shinigami may look scary, but you have to remember she never kills anybody.

{O} Ghost White ~ Through Death's Eyes {O}

Kon'nichiwa! I am Michi, a Shinigami spirit. My duty is to ensure that those who are appointed to die do not avoid their fate, and to escort their souls to the afterlife. It is my honour to show you today a little of my routine. You will see the world through my eyes, the way I see it; there is no colour (except about me) and everything is stripped to the barest essence. The butterflies you see hovering about me are the souls I have collected.

Here I wait upon a hill, overlooking the area in which another soul is destined to be released.

This poor man is heading off to work, but he does not feel well. He is about to have a heart attack. I will be there to collect his soul to make sure it is not lost. Souls wander easily, like butterflies on the wind, and once they escape their assigned Shinigami they are too difficult to recapture and are lost forever, sad ghosts haunting the world.

After a successful collection there is some time to play. My day is not all work! Here I am enjoying dancing by a pond, watching the swans. You can see the ripples in the wind as dark arrows on the surface, and the wind itself as curls of movement around the tree.

This girl is happy, jumping in the flower meadow. She is not due to die but I stop to watch her play, enjoying the vibrancy of life. The butterfly souls are attracted to her, too. Sometimes wandering ghosts are attracted to young children, which is how poltergeist activity develops. They want to play, too, but they become angry and frustrated when they can't interact with the living. In a case of extreme poltergeist haunting, the Shinigami are alerted and sometimes we can capture the ghost and release the soul, saving both the dead and the living. There is no poltergeist out here though, just the souls I have collected on my day's rounds.

My face in detail. You see my true appearance, as I show you how I would look to my own eyes; I am disguised to the souls I gather, lest I frighten them away. They see a pale but beautiful woman, her accessories of carved ivory. My true form makes more sense when you consider that sometimes I have to fight evil spirits which seek to devour souls. And, on very rare occasions, a soul is so evil and twisted that it is not wanted in the afterlife, and the Shinigami is directed to destroy it instead of collecting. I devour such evil souls with my eyes.

Many of you will be accustomed, no doubt, to the Reapers of western culture, who generally carry a scythe. In fact the Soulblade can be any form, but we Shinigami prefer the bladed fan. The soul is harvested from the body with the bone blades, then gently gathered with the fan. An accomplished Shinigami can cut out and scoop up a soul in one practised sweep, so swift it does not even realise what has happened.

The back of my coiffure, to show my knife, for use in fighting evil spirits. When I have incapacitated them with the knife, I eat them, and hang their bones on my belt.

I hope you  have enjoyed your little tour and that it has helped you to view my kind with less fear and suspicion than legend often promotes. Good people have nothing to fear from us; we are here to protect the souls of the dead, for even in death, the world can be a dangerous place.

{O} Ghost White ~ Credits {O}

Location: *C i c a* black and white art installation

Poses: Juicy 'Divinely Naughty' angel11,  - hilltop image (waiting)
Striking Poses 'Nutcracker' Female (group gift) - house, pond
Striking Poses 'Ashanti' (free) - butterflies, girl

Outfit: 
Gauze 'Ishiko' Kimono with bone fans & tabi/zori [socks/sandals]
Philotic Energy hair 'Ishiko' Jet Black Red Tipped (with bone decoration)
Tekeli-li hair 'Efreet' (ponytail attachment with knife) and horns
Frick skin 'Fear' ~ Goth ~ Murky
Nomine 'Corinthian' Sharp Eyes (from Neil Gaiman's Sandman comics)
Contraption Shark Grin
HEX - Get Nailed! Bloodsilver Talons (with particle drip effect you can just see on the fan closeup)

sey 'Kabbalah' necklace (free)
Gothic Dreams 'Hex' Earrings (demonology hunt 09)

Butterfly by Cica Ghost (free gift from sim)