Fine line and coloured tattoo of a blue, grey and pink feather with small black birds rising from it, on the top of a foot.

Feather and flying birds on a foot

Fine line · Other · Mixed · Photo

A close photograph of a foot with a tattoo of a feather drawn in blue, grey and pink tones, its quill running diagonally across the foot towards the toes. Seven small black birds in fine linework appear to lift off from the tip of the feather and drift upwards. The shading is soft, and the plain light background keeps the focus on the design.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The wind off the Severn had got into the big top by six, and Mr Harvey was swearing at the canvas while I counted change for the coconut shy. Nobody wanted coconuts in a gale. What they wanted was Nell's caravan at the end of the row, where the blue lamp was lit and the kettle had been going since dawn.

Keep reading

Nell painted feathers. She kept a biscuit tin of pheasant and jay quills she'd bought off a taxidermist in Ludlow, and for a penny she'd paint one for you using whatever was left in her jam jars. Blue for the stripe, grey for the shadow, a thread of pink where the light caught the vane. Her hands shook by then, but never the brush.

The day Mr Harvey sold the coconut stall to pay the lorry men, Nell gave me the last feather she'd done, grey-blue with pink running down it like a river. 'Hold it by the quill, not the vane,' she said, 'and tell it where you're going.' I laughed at her. Then I walked out past the ghost train with it in my fist, and the wind took the feather out of my hand and lifted it over the car park. Seven starlings came off the telegraph wire and followed it up as if they'd been waiting for a signal.

I never got it back. Nell died that winter, and the caravan was sold to a man who sold it on again. Some evenings in Shrewsbury I still see a little scatter of birds peel off the kerb, and I still say the name of the place I meant to go, just in case.

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