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

Dreamcatchers and script quote on ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows three dreamcatchers with woven webs and shaded feathers hanging from beaded cords, alongside a handwritten script quote reading Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today. The feathers use soft grey shading and fine dark outlines, while the lettering is solid black. The design runs diagonally down the side of the ribcage against a pale skin tone.

Realism Lettering Ribs Dreamcatcher Feather Script Quote Bead

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lock gate groans open at Bath Top Lock before the sun is properly up, and you are already at the tiller with a mug going cold on the gunwale. Your brother Tomasz has coiled the mooring rope wrong again, the way he always did, and you have stopped correcting him because the boat is half his now, or will be once the bank finishes being unkind about the loan.

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Three webs hang from the wheelhouse window, bought from a stall in Devizes for four pounds each. Their feathers are grey and rain-stained, and they knock against the glass whenever the boat dips through a lock. You told the stallholder they were for luck. She said they were for catching the bad dreams in the net and letting the good ones slip through, and you thought that sounded like something a person says to close a sale, but you bought all three anyway.

Night on the water is long. Somewhere past Semington the engine stops, and you sit on the cabin step with a torch and the logbook, writing down the name of every lock you have worked since March, because Tomasz says the canal swallows whatever you don't record. Your handwriting slopes when you're tired. You copy out the line someone once painted along the side of the boat, Dream as if you'll live forever, live as if you'll die today, and it looks less like a motto than a dare.

In the morning the webs have caught a fine mist and each thread holds a bead of water. Tomasz steps aboard with two bacon rolls and says nothing about the rope. You untie the boat, let the feathers swing, and push off into the current, and the next gate is already opening for you.