Traditional colour tattoo of three banners reading home is wherever I'm with you, wrapped around orange and teal feathers on an upper arm.

Feather banners with quote on upper arm

Traditional · Upper arm · Mixed · Photo

Three grey shaded banners with bold black outlines carry the words home is wherever I'm with you, wrapped around a cluster of feathers. The feathers are filled with orange, yellow, green and teal, with soft shading along their edges. The tattoo fills the centre of the frame against a plain, slightly blurred background, with a grey tank top covering the wearer's torso.

Traditional Lettering Upper arm Banner Feather Ribbon Quote Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The marquee poles are groaning against the wind off the water meadow, and you are the one holding the bag of spare ribbon while Aunt Maureen pins bunting to the lychgate. Somebody has to find the feathers. Dev collected them on the shingle at Orford three weeks ago and promised, with the solemnity of a man handling pottery, that he would not lose the tin. Now the tin is nowhere, the vicar's car is turning into the lane, and the bride is hiding in the farmhouse kitchen with her hands over her face.

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You find it in the glovebox of the hire van, under a road atlas and a packet of wine gums gone soft in the heat. Inside, four feathers lie in cotton wool, teal and ochre and a green like pond weed, bent but whole. Dev's handwriting on the lid says: for the banners, do not let her say no. You had not known there were banners. Apparently there are three of them, grey card cut into curls by Lizzie at her kitchen table, each one lettered in a fat black hand copied from a card the bride keeps in her purse.

You thread the feathers through the ribbon while the wind tries to take them, and tape the last corner to the gatepost with gaffer tape from your coat pocket. When the bride comes up the lane on her father's arm, the banners are snapping above the gate, the teal catching the low sun. She stops to read the words aloud, slowly, as if they might change if she looks away. Home is wherever I'm with you. Her father clears his throat. Dev becomes very interested in his bootlace.

Later, when the speeches are done and the sky has gone the colour of dishwater, you find one loose feather snagged in the hedge at the end of the lane. You pocket it. It is still in your coat the next morning, flattened and perfect, and you keep it anyway.