Six-panel collage of feather tattoos with flying birds, placed on the ribs, collarbone, upper back, ankle and neck, in black and grey ink.

Feather and bird tattoos collage

Fine line · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

The collage shows six photographs of feather tattoos, several with small birds flying away from the quill and some with short script lines beside them. The linework is fine and the feathers are shaded in grey, with soft tonal gradients along the vanes. The photos are warm-toned and taken at different angles, with the tattoos sitting on the ribs, collarbone, upper back, ankle and neck.

Fine line Realism Ribs Chest Back Ankle Neck Feather Bird Script Quill Collage

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit down, you, and mind the tea, because I'm not telling this twice. The house was called Fernlea then, before the damp got into the name as well as the walls, and the summer Mr Tremayne came to stay he brought one trunk and a shoebox of grey feathers he would not let the maid touch.

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Every morning there was one less in that box. He'd walk down to the harbour wall at six with his pockets full, and open his hand the way you'd open a door. The starlings went up off the slipway like smoke and the gulls complained about it, and he'd say, 'Birds of a feather, Mrs Penhale, always find their own flock.' I thought it was a daft thing to say to a landlady with eleven breakfasts to cook.

Then in September a telegram came for him. He read it on the stairs and his face didn't move at all. He packed the trunk, left the shoebox on my hall table with the lid off, and went off up the road without his hat. I wanted to be cross about it. Instead I stood at the front window and watched the last swallows gather on the telegraph wire, thirty or so, and then they lifted all together and went south over the bay.

The shoebox is still on my dresser. There's one feather left in it, long and dark, with a pale tip like a struck match. I never did learn whose flock he went back to. Pass the biscuits, love, and don't look at me like that. The kettle's only just boiled.