Dreamcatcher tattoo with shaded brown and grey feathers and teal beads running down the outer thigh.

Dreamcatcher and feathers on a thigh

Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A large dreamcatcher with a woven web sits at the top, with three smaller hoops hanging below and several feathers dangling from them. The web and hoops are drawn in bold black linework, while the feathers are shaded in soft browns and greys with fine detail along the quills. Small teal beads add the only bright colour, and the design wraps across the outer thigh against a plain light background.

Thigh Dreamcatcher Feather Bead Web Hoop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The willow hoops have dried crooked again, and the pass wind is in no mood to help you. Hollin Gap closes with the first hard snow, and the last drover of the season is at your door with a mule that has lost a shoe and a boy who will not stop shivering.

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He wants a web to keep the dreams off him. You tell him the web catches good dreams as easily as bad ones, so he must choose which he can spare. He shrugs. You pick through the box of grey goose feathers for the ones barred with brown, and you knot three teal beads that your sister brought back from the coast market years ago and never wore. You tie each knot slowly and count them under your breath, because counting keeps your fingers from shaking in the cold.

While you work, he says his grandmother walked this pass forty years back and never came down the far side. You keep your eyes on the cord. You find you have tied the last knot on the outer hoop, the one you hung for her and never sent, and that the count has come out to her name's length. You do not tell him. You fasten the hoop to the mule's bridle with a strip of leather.

At first light he rides off with the web swinging over the snow, three feathers lifting and settling with every step. You stand in the doorway with the cold in your teeth and watch the smallest hoop turn until the mist closes over it.