Black and grey tattoo on the ribs of a side torso showing dreamcatchers, shaded feathers and the script quote Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today.

Dreamcatchers and feathers with script on ribs

Lettering · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo runs down the side of the ribs, combining a large dreamcatcher with two smaller hoops, three shaded feathers and a line of cursive script reading Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today. The feathers and hoops use soft grey shading and fine outlines, while the lettering is solid black. The image is a close, angled photograph of the torso with a white top above and a pink waistband below, with the tattoo as the clear focus.

Lettering Realism Ribs Dreamcatcher Feather Script Quote Hoop

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The sports hall at Hollinside Comprehensive still smells of floor polish, and Marcus Vane is already holding two plastic cups of warm prosecco when you walk in, which tells you he has been hoping you would come. Twenty-two years have gone grey at his temples in a way that suits him. He is wearing the same cheap watch he wore to the Year Eleven leavers' disco, and he laughs at you before he says hello.

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Nobody here remembers that you once spent an entire Latin lesson copying a line onto the inside of your pencil case: Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today. Mr Pryce confiscated it and read it aloud to the class in a voice that made it sound like a threat. Marcus says he never forgot it, though he admits he was the one who drew the dreamcatcher beside it, badly, with a biro that kept skipping on the plastic.

Later you sit on the damp bench behind the bike sheds, where the two of you once shared a Embassy Regal and swore you would leave this town by Friday. He hands you a folded sheet from his wallet. It is a pencil drawing of a dreamcatcher with two small hoops hanging beneath it and three feathers trailing down, shaded soft as wood smoke. "I got the big hoop wrong," he says, "and the feathers look like pigeons." Your nan once told you that a dreamcatcher lets the good dreams slide down the feathers to the sleeper while the bad ones tangle in the web and burn away at dawn.

You fold the drawing back along its crease and slide it into your coat pocket. Across the car park the sports hall lights go out one bank at a time, and Marcus is still standing in the doorway with both cups, waiting for you to decide whether you are staying for the last song.