Black and grey shaded feather tattoo on the side of a person's ribcage, below the arm, with a white vest top beside it.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feather tattoo on the side ribs

Realism · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A single black and grey feather runs diagonally up the side of a person's torso, with its quill pointing towards the upper back. The barbs are shaded with dark tones and lighter greys to show texture and depth. The tattoo sits against smooth skin, with a white tank top and a blurred outdoor background framing the composition.

Realism Ribs Feather Quill Plume

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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

At Hollin Cross the stationmaster kept a tin box under the ticket counter, and in it were the feathers the night mail left on the line. Nobody knew why the birds came down at that hour. Old Mrs Abney swept them up each morning and counted them, because her mother had told her that a feather left on a platform was a letter nobody had yet opened.

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One winter a boy came off the stopping train with a carpet bag and no ticket. He said his name was Tam Corran and that he needed a quill. Mrs Abney asked what for. He said he had to write to his brother in Carlisle, and that the station's pen had gone dry and the ink in the ledgers would not take on anything but a bird's flight.

She gave him the longest feather from the box, a grey one with its shaft still straight. He sat on the bench by the stove and wrote until the lamps guttered. By morning the feather was worn to a stub and the page looked blank, but a reply came on the noon train, folded around a single black feather from a crow. It said only that the letter had been read.

Tam stayed on as porter. When the night mail passed he went out to the cutting and looked along the rails for anything falling. He never found another feather, and Mrs Abney never again swept the line. The tin box stayed on the shelf with its lid open, and the crow feather lay on top of the rest where anyone could see it.