Realistic black and grey feather tattoo on the side of the ribs, shown in a phone photo.

Feather tattoo on the ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A single dark feather runs diagonally across the side of the ribcage, with its quill curving up toward the armpit. The quill and barbs are rendered in fine black and grey shading, with soft highlights along the vane that give the feather depth. The plain background and red top at the upper edge of the frame keep the focus on the tattoo.

Realism Ribs Feather Quill

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Take it to an artist as a reference. A good artist will make it yours rather than copy someone else's tattoo.

A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Nobody in Harrowden went into Cold Ash Wood after the bell, but my father sent me in with the snares regardless, because a girl of eleven costs less than a dog and he had already sold the dog. The path ran past the charcoal burners' ring and under a lattice of hazel, and that was where I found the feather, laid across a root as neat as a letter someone had meant to post. It was a rook's flight feather, long and black, with a blue sheen when it turned and a quill that curved up at the tip like a finger beckoning.

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I took it to Mrs Pell at the cottage by the ford, because she knew what fell in the wood and what did not. She turned it over twice without touching the vane and said a feather that lies across the path has been dropped by something that was walking the other way. She told me to carry it home in my left hand and never let it brush my right, and to say the names of the houses along the lane as I passed each one, so whatever was following would know who lived where and stop counting.

I did as I was told. Halfway down the lane the wind got up under the feather and tugged it sideways, hard, toward the trees behind the churchyard. I held the quill between finger and thumb and felt the vane shiver, the way a bird does when it has seen the hawk before you have.

My father was asleep on the settle when I came in. I put the feather on the mantel, above the candle stub, where the draught from the door could reach it. By morning it had turned itself to face the wood.