Upper arm tattoo of a shaded grey feather wrapped in a teal awareness ribbon, with the script words Your battle is my battle sister beneath it.

Feather and teal ribbon with script on upper arm

Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

The tattoo shows a shaded grey feather with fine barbs and small dark fragments drifting off its left edge, wrapped by a teal ribbon loop. Below sits a line of black cursive script reading Your battle is my battle sister. The grey feather shading is softly graduated, while the ribbon uses solid teal with gradient highlights, set against pale skin on an upper arm.

Upper arm Feather Ribbon Awareness ribbon Script Quote Dot

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The man at your window has a grey feather folded inside his form, and the stamp in your hand hovers above his passport for longer than the queue behind him likes. You have been on the Lanvet crossing for nine winters. You know the lorries by their rattle and the drivers by how they hold their papers, and this one holds his like something that might blow away. Across the bridge, his sister keeps a bakery on the far bank. Her last letter, which he has read to you twice through the glass, said only that the geese were late this year.

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The form asks for purpose of travel. He has written, in careful capitals, that he is bringing back a feather. You tell him the box is for goods, not sentiment, and he laughs, a short sound that surprises you both. Behind him the wire fence along the embankment is shedding things: dark scraps of wing lifting off the barbs and scattering over the tarmac like handwriting nobody finished. A gust takes two of them through the open hatch of your booth and sets them down on the ledger.

You stamp the passport. Then, because the morning is cold and the queue is shorter than it looks, you write in the margin of the log, one feather, returned, and slide the form back under the glass with his name on it.

He walks out onto the bridge with the feather held flat against his palm. Below him the river has caught the first light and turned the colour of a ribbon pulled taut, and when a goose lifts from the reeds on the far side he stops, lifts his hand, and lets the wind have it.