Karou’s Wishbone

I’ve been dreaming quite a while of doing a photo session inspired by Karou, the main character of Daughter of Smoke and Bone, and my dream has come true thanks to Marco Vinagre.

Thanks to Kat Von D’s Satellite Blue eyebrow pomade, my eyebrows and my hair (Manic Panic’s Bad Boy Blue) finally match, making my hair look like it grew up like this.

Funny thing is Karou’s hair really does, because one day, she wished her hair to be blue.

Daughter of Smoke and Bone by Laini Taylor is a wonderful YA series with parallel worlds, Chimaera and Angels.

Karou, at the beginning, is an art student in Prague – I hinted at that by wearing my William Blake Dr. Martens.

Quite fittingly, Blake’s painting on the shoes features Satan in a biblical scene from the book of Job.

Also, I was surrounded by graffiti artists painting the walls near Waterloo in London. If you’re wondering, the tights are by Calzedonia.

Karou keeps on drawing her family, including Issa, a half-serpent woman, and Brimstone, a Baphomet-like figure.

What her friends don’t know is that Brimstone is actually Karou’s adopted father and most of the Chimaera she draws exist. The Chimaera look like a mix of different animals and human beings. Brimstone is reminiscent of the occult deity Baphomet, like the one on my Killstar dress.

Once upon a time, a little girl was raised by monsters.

But angels burned the doorways to their world, and she was all alone.

— Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone

Karou is supposed to bring teeth to Brimstone, but he won’t tell her why. There might be a bit of bone magic happening, hence the title of the series, Daughter of Smoke and Bone. Brimstone has a wishbone which belongs to Karou later in the series.

What would snapping the wishbone do?

She had been innocent once, a little girl playing with feathers on the floor of a devil’s lair. She wasn’t innocent now, but she didn’t know what to do about it. This was her life: magic and shame and secrets and teeth and a deep, nagging hollow at the center of herself where something was most certainly missing.

— Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone

A wishbone is a forked bone belonging to birds. Splitting it is supposed to bring good luck. This tradition might comes from the Roman. I feel really lucky (!) to have this, as I literally wished for a wishbone the morning before the photo session and then had it 3D printed by a kind colleague, Ben Thomas, using a model from Thingiverse, during the day.

I painted it white and secured it on my necklace full of beads, or maybe actual wishes, like Karou’s necklace. This bead and fabric necklace is a beloved gift from my friend Sayaka San who owns a wonderful place in the Kyoto region. I remember having spent some magical days at hers…

If you wonder where the blue magical looking highlights come from, it’s the Alchemist palette by Kat Von D. Karou is from Prague, she should visit the Alchemy Museum!

Karou uses her beads / wishes for a lot of things, like blue hair or a small revenge on her awful ex boyfriend. At the beginning, she never understands why Brimstone tells her to be careful with what she wishes for.

Karou falls in love with an angel, but she lives in a world where Angels and Chimaera are at war. The monsters are not necessarily who we might think they are in the series. However dangerous or evil Brimstone would look like to human eyes, he is not the monster in this book.

“Karou” is supposed to mean hope.

Wishes are false. Hope is true. Hope makes its own magic.

— Laini Taylor, Daughter of Smoke and Bone

There are a few things which are not perfect in this book, like some subtext about sexuality at the beginning that I don’t think I agree with, but it still is one of my favourite stories, gorgeously written by Laini Taylor who also penned one of my other inspirations (Strange the Dreamer and the Muse of Nightmare series).

Have I broken the wishbone, and what other powers do Karou have? There might be more in a next article!