Black and grey dreamcatcher tattoo with three hanging feathers on a woman's upper back, beside the shoulder blade.

Dreamcatcher on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's bare back, seen from behind, with a dreamcatcher tattoo on the upper right side near the shoulder blade. The circular hoop has a fine woven web with a shaded rim, and three strings hang down to feathers with soft, sketchy shading. The ink is black and grey, set against a light background with a white top at the lower edge.

Back Dreamcatcher Feather Web Hoop

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit nearer the fire, the lot of you, and mind the draught under the door, because the snow has found the latch again. You'll want this one told before the candles gutter. Old Harriet Pell kept the Lamb at Cold Hollow, where the coach road bends over the moor, and she had a hoop of ash her grandmother bent by hand, strung with willow webbing so fine you could lose a needle in it. Three strings hung from the bottom, and on each string she tied a grouse feather from her husband's last hunt. Every night she hung it by the bedroom door, and every bad dream that wandered in got tangled in the web and sat there until the sun came up and burned it away.

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One December a carter came in off the moor with the snow piled on his shoulders like a coat. His name was Tobias Wren, and he would not sleep. He sat by the kitchen range with his boots steaming and told Harriet he had dreamed of his brother going under the mill race, the same dream every night since the thaw. She gave him the room under the eaves, and she hung the web above his bed, and she said nothing more about it.

In the morning the carter was gone, his horse with him, and the bed was made tight as a drum. On the windowsill lay three feathers, and when Harriet lifted the hoop from its nail she found a single grey thread knotted in the very centre of the web, where the knot always sits. It was the only dream left in it. Nothing had gone under the mill race in that dream, only a man on the far bank, lifting his hand to wave him home.

So if you wake tonight and something is sitting on your chest, don't be frightened of it. Look for the sill in the morning. If there are feathers on it, somebody else's bad dream has been caught, and somebody else has gone home lighter.