Fine line dreamcatcher tattoo with feathers, a key and a green dragonfly on a woman's upper back, partly covered by a blue towel.

Dreamcatcher, key and dragonfly on upper back

Fine line · Back · Mixed · Photo

A dreamcatcher with a dense spider-web pattern hangs from a fine outline, with three feathers and an ornate key below it. A small dragonfly with a green body and pale blue wings sits beside the dreamcatcher's upper edge. The linework is dark and fine, with soft grey shading on the feathers and key, and the tattoo sits on bare skin with a teal towel in the lower frame.

Fine line Back Dreamcatcher Feather Key Dragonfly Web

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The officer at the booth held the dreamcatcher up to the lamp for so long I thought he would take it. Its web turned gold in the light and the three feathers swung as if they were arguing. I told him it was for catching bad dreams, which is what Mama always said, and he asked whether it had ever worked. I said he should ask me again in the morning.

The key is the one from the hook by the back door in Vrbica. I lifted it off the nail the night we left, and I have carried it through three countries since, so long that the bow has worn smooth under my thumb. Nobody has asked me what it opens. I am not sure anyone at a border would believe the house still stands with a stranger's washing on the line, behind a gate I cannot see from the road.

A dragonfly came in through the open window while we waited, green as a bottle glass, and settled on the dashboard beside the feathers. It stayed through two stamps and the driver's cough. When the barrier finally lifted, it rose in one straight line, not towards the dark road ahead but back over the fields we had come from, and I watched it until the headlights could no longer find it.

I keep the key in my coat pocket and the dreamcatcher on the mirror. Tonight I will tie the key to the lowest loop of the web, the way Mama tied the feathers, so that whatever I dream on the far side has to get past both. Write when you are settled. Tell me what the new town calls its bakery, and whether the sea is as grey as they promised.

Love, Ana