Black and grey dreamcatcher with shaded feathers and a script quote above it, tattooed on the side of a person's ribs.

Dreamcatcher and feathers with script on ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A black and grey dreamcatcher with three shaded feathers hangs from a beaded thread on the side of the ribs, with a cursive quote reading "Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today" above it. The feathers use soft grey shading for depth, while the hoops and webbing are drawn in crisp dark linework. The photo is taken from the side at close range, with the subject's face out of frame and the top and bottoms partly covering the torso.

Realism Lettering Ribs Dreamcatcher Feather Script Quote Bead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Just gone three, and the ward on Hollins had settled into the hum of machines and the squeak of someone's slippers down the corridor. Nurse Adaeze Okafor had her torch clipped to her pocket and a cold cup of tea going stale on the drugs trolley when she found the thing tangled in the locker of bed nine: a hoop of willow bent into a ring, webbed with thread gone the colour of weak tea, and three grey feathers hanging from it on beaded cord.

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Mr Pryce, who was eighty-six and had spent the afternoon telling anyone who would listen that he was not going anywhere, had asked her to keep it safe. 'My granddaughter made it,' he said. 'She says it catches the bad dreams. I say the bad ones come in through the door with the consultant.' Adaeze laughed, and he didn't, quite. He tapped the index card taped inside the locker door, where someone had written in careful italic: Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today.

She hung it from the blind cord above his bed, where the air from the vent set it turning slowly. Around four his breathing changed, slower and wetter, and she sat with him and counted the drips. He woke once and asked whether the feathers were still there. They were. He said good, and told her to go and take her break, because there were forty people in this building who would not sleep tonight and only one of them needed her hands.

At six the sky over the car park went the colour of dishwater. Mr Pryce was asleep, properly now, mouth open, one hand flat on the blanket as if keeping time. Adaeze left the dreamcatcher where it turned. On her way out she stopped at the window and saw the feathers swing, grey against the brightening glass, going nowhere in particular.