Black and grey tattoo of a shaded feather dissolving into a flock of solid bird silhouettes on the side of the ribs.

Feather turning into a flock of birds

Blackwork · Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A shaded feather curves diagonally across the side of the ribs and breaks up into a flock of solid black bird silhouettes rising towards the top of the image. The feather has soft grey shading along its barbs, while the birds are filled in with flat black ink. The composition is black and grey on pale skin, with the flock leading the eye upwards from the feather.

Blackwork Realism Ribs Feather Bird Flock Silhouette Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mrs Pardoe counted the spoons twice before breakfast, the way she always did when the wind came off the Channel and rattled the sash in the back bedroom. The lodger in number four had paid a month in advance and asked for nothing but a view of the harbour wall and a pot of tea left outside his door at six. Nobody in Saltersgate knew what he did for a living. The postman said he received letters with foreign stamps and never once opened them on the step.

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On the third morning she found a feather on the landing carpet, long and grey-black, its barbs lifting as though someone had only just stroked them the wrong way. She picked it up between two fingers and went to knock. He answered in his shirtsleeves, looked at the feather, then past her at the window, where the gulls were lifting off the chimney pots in a ragged wheel.

"They come back for their things," he said, and took the feather from her without thanks, turning it so the light ran along its length. "Every one of them leaves something behind when they go."

She meant to ask what he meant. Instead she watched him open the sash and let the cold in, and she watched the feather lift from his palm as if it had decided something. It broke apart in the air. Each barb became a bird, black and quick, and they climbed past the gulls and over the harbour wall until the last one was only a fleck above the sea.