Black and grey realism tattoo of a dreamcatcher with feathers and beads on the side of a ribcage.

Dreamcatcher and feathers on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A dreamcatcher with a woven web, beads and a trailing feather cluster is tattooed along the side of the ribs. The feathers and frame use soft shading and fine detail, while the web is drawn with crisp dark lines. The ink is entirely black and grey against warm skin, with a navel piercing visible below.

Realism Ribs Dreamcatcher Feather Bead Web Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you, and mind the tar on that bench. Your uncle's boat went out at four and the wind has gone round to the north-east, so we'll keep the kettle on until they're in. Now. You want the hoop, don't you? Everybody wants the hoop.

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My mother made the first one from a broken herring-box rim and the old twine off a dead trawl. She wound it so tight the web had no slack anywhere, then tied a pearl button in the middle, the one from her wedding coat. She used to say the net doesn't keep out the wind. It keeps out the bad sleep. Whatever comes through in the dark gets caught in the knots and goes round and round until morning, and the morning carries it off over the water where it can't find its way back.

She hung it over the bunk with three gull feathers tied at the bottom, grey on the outside and dark underneath, and a string of blue glass beads that came up in a trawl off Mousehole one winter. When my father went out in the February gale, the feathers swung and the beads knocked against the frame all night, and none of us slept. We sat up and talked about him until the light came grey over the wall. He came in at noon with a crate of hake and salt in his beard, and he said he'd dreamed of nothing at all.

So that's the trick of it, child. You don't catch the good dreams. You catch the storm and let it spin itself out. Now pass me that needle, and mind the end of the twine. It bites.