Black and grey fine line tattoo of a dreamcatcher with trailing feathers on the side ribs of a person in denim shorts.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Dreamcatcher and feathers on the ribs

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A large dreamcatcher with a main hoop and three smaller hoops hangs from the top of the frame, with a web of fine lines inside each ring. Shaded feathers and small loose quills drift down and to the left across the side of the ribs. The image is a black and white photograph, with soft lighting and the tattoo as the clear focus against the skin and light denim.

Fine line Ribs Dreamcatcher Feather Web Hoop Quill

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Wren, Mam says you have stopped writing home, so I am writing to you instead, and you can't pretend the post hasn't reached you. The gull feathers have come in thick since the storms, and the cliff path is full of them. Father's old hoop is still on the nail by the back door, the one he wove from cord unpicked off the spare trawl net, and I have been mending its web every evening since the boat came in without him.

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Last Tuesday a woman from the inland road came down for eggs and stopped in the yard, staring at the hoop as if it might speak. She said her grandmother had told her a net catches bad dreams and lets the good ones through, and that the smaller rings are for the days you need to begin again. I said Father would have laughed. He always said a net catches only what you give it. Then she asked if I could make her one with the grey feathers that drift down when the wind turns west, and I heard myself say three weeks.

I have strung it now, one large ring and three small ones on a single cord, and the feathers hang from the lowest like a fistful of weather that can't decide where to go. Come home at Christmas if you can. I will hang one over your bed, and you can tell me what it catches, and I will tell you whether it has been listening. Your loving sister, Ada.