Black ink pen drawing of a dreamcatcher design with a tree of life, beads and feathers, drawn in fine line on white paper, not shown on skin.

Dreamcatcher with feathers design

Fine line · Black and grey · Flash

A pen drawing of a dreamcatcher design with a large hoop containing a tree of life, a smaller hoop with a bird silhouette, and several small round medallions. Long feathers hang from the lower edges and a bead chain links the elements, with small lettering on one medallion. Fine black linework and stippled shading are used on a white sheet, with a Micron pen lying across the top right corner.

Fine line Dreamcatcher Tree of life Feather Bird Bead Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

You take the stairs because the lift on the nineteenth floor of Harrow Court has been broken since March, and by the eleventh landing your knees have started their complaint. Mrs Okafor's door is open for once, a cricket commentary murmuring inside. She hands you the carrier bag without looking up from her crossword. "Hang it where the wind can get at it," she says. "Not in the window. Windows only keep things out."

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The hoop is wire wrapped in rope gone grey with weather. Inside it someone has woven a tree, its branches spreading like a crack across ice, and the beads click softly as you climb. On the fourteenth floor balcony you knot the cord to the rail. Below, the estate sprawls: a five-a-side pitch, a bus shelter, the canal glinting like a dropped knife. Two swifts scream past the tower at eye level, close enough that you feel the air shift against your cheek.

Her late husband bought the catcher from a stall in Dalston, back when they still went to markets on Sundays. She told him it caught nothing useful, only feathers, and he laughed and said that was the most useful thing a thing could catch. You think about that while you tie the last knot, and the medallions swing out over the drop and back again, the little bird inside its hoop turning to face the open sky.

When the wind comes up properly, one long feather works loose from the lowest cord and drifts away past the floors. You watch it fall, sliding sideways like something that has decided where it is going, until it snags on a lamppost by the bus shelter, grey against the orange light. Downstairs, Mrs Okafor's door is shut and her radio has gone quiet. Up on the rail, the dreamcatcher keeps turning, doing all the work it was ever going to do.