Watercolour style tattoo of a purple and pink feather breaking into a flock of black birds on the side of the ribs.

Feather dissolving into birds on the ribs

Ribs · Colour · Photo

A feather in purple, pink and blue fades into a flock of small black birds that fly off towards the right. The feather has soft, painted edges with splashes of pink and blue spreading outwards, and the birds are sharply defined silhouettes. The tattoo sits on bare skin at the side of the body and fills most of the frame, with a faint teal tattoo visible at the left edge.

Ribs Feather Bird Flock Splatter

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The orchil pot had boiled dry twice before Nan let me touch it, and by then the whole cottage smelled of wet stone and something sweeter underneath. She said the purple came out of the rocks themselves if you boiled them long enough and asked nicely. I didn't believe her until the first feather came out of the pot the colour of a bruised plum, and she held it up to the window and laughed at my face.

Keep reading

Every October the shearwaters gathered on the north strand, hundreds of them, lifting off in ragged sheets whenever the wind swung round. Nan kept a tally in pencil on the back of the shipping calendar. Four hundred and twelve, she'd write, and beside it, one feather for each bird that didn't come back. She insisted the count be kept honest. I walked the tideline every morning gathering what the gulls had left, sorting the quills by how much salt they'd taken.

The winter Nan's hands went stiff, I took over the pot. I dyed a feather pink with madder root and pinned it above the stove, and from the kitchen window I watched the flock rise off the strand and stream out over the water towards the mainland lights. I counted until the light went. Four hundred and twelve, I wrote that night, though I was never sure I had them right.

In spring the ferry brought new pencils and a letter asking whether the island still wanted its calendars printed. I wrote back yes. Then I walked down to the strand with the last purple feather in my coat pocket, and when the wind turned I opened my hand and let it go after them.