Black ink tattoo of a feather breaking up into small flying birds, placed on a woman's shoulder near the collarbone.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feather dissolving into birds on a shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

A solid black feather trails from the right into a cluster of small bird silhouettes that rise toward the upper left of the shoulder. The linework is fine and the feather is filled in with solid black ink, with the birds becoming smaller and sparser as they move away from it. The photograph shows only the shoulder, neck and hair against a soft pale background, with a knitted white garment at the bottom edge.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The feather came down on the cabin roof just as the lock gates groaned shut behind the barge, and you caught it before the wind could carry it back over the water. Dad was at the tiller, swearing at a bow line snagged on a sunken pram. The feather was black as a rook's wing and longer than your forearm, and you tucked it under the strap of your satchel without telling him.

Keep reading

Three days later, at Naburn, the barge was tied up under the willows and the birds came in off the stubble fields at dusk. You watched them from the gunwale, counting the rooks as they rose, split and drew themselves together again over the far hedge. Mum used to say that when a feather let go of a bird, the bird had decided to leave. You never knew whether she meant it kindly.

On the last night you climbed onto the roof with the feather and held it up against the sky. The wind took the vane first, then the fine tip, and a dozen small shapes lifted off the bank and went after it, dark specks thinning until the river was only river again. Dad found you there at first light, sitting with your knees drawn up and the bare quill across your lap.

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