Black line dreamcatcher with hanging feathers tattooed on the upper back, seen from behind beneath long wavy hair with a braided crown.

Dreamcatcher tattoo on upper back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind with long, loose, wavy brown hair pinned into a braided crown. Below the hair, a black dreamcatcher with a circular web and two feathers hanging from its base sits on her upper back near the shoulder blade. The ink is solid black with clean outlines, and the warm, soft-focus background of weathered wood keeps the attention on the tattoo and hair.

Back Dreamcatcher Feather Braid Hair Web

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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

The wind off the Caddan pass has teeth by November, and Maeve's mules are already stamping when you reach the cairn. Her brother Iain has tied the dreamcatcher to the last fence post with fishing line, the hoop bound in grey wool strips, the web knotted so tight the frost can't get through it. "It's for the ewes," he says, not looking at you. "Nobody believes it's for the ewes."

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You remember what your grandmother said about webs: they catch the bad dreams and let the good ones slip through the middle. You hold the hoop up against the light. Through the mesh the valley below splits into a hundred small squares, the farm roofs, the loch, the road where the post van will crawl up in spring. Two feathers hang from the base, one brown and one the white of a gull, and they tick against the post every time the gusts come through.

Iain says the pass took their father twelve winters back, on a morning just like this, and every autumn since, someone has hung a new web here and burned the old one in the hearth at home. You had thought it was superstition. Now you tie the final knot yourself, pulling the line until your fingers go numb and the feathers finally hang still.

Walking down, you look back once. The first sun clears the ridge and strikes the web, and for a moment the whole pass seems caught in it, every stone and sheep bell held in the silver threads until you are safely round the bend.