Pencil drawing of a shaded feather wrapped with a beaded cord and topped with a quill, with a small claw at the lower left, shown as a tattoo design on plain paper.

Feather with beads and quill pencil design

Black and grey · Flash

A shaded pencil sketch of a large feather with fine layered strokes, bound near the top with a coil of wire or cord and strung with a beaded chain that loops down the right side. A quill-like point rises from the top and a small curled talon-like form sits at the lower left, all on a pale, plain background. The drawing uses soft graphite tones and dark accents with no colour.

Feather Bead Quill Claw

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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

Dear Marguerite, I found the old tin of your things under the stairs when the removal men came for the piano, and I am sending you the one I could not bring myself to throw away. It is the grey feather from the school fete, the one you tied to your satchel strap with that bit of green garden wire and called your lucky quill. You said the beads were from your nan's rosary, and that she would have skinned you for taking them, but she never found out. I have kept it in a cocoa tin for thirty-one years, which is longer than you kept anything in your life, you terrible magpie.

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I know you will say it is only a feather. Still, the wire has gone rusty at the knot and the beads have slipped to one side, so the chain hangs crooked down the back of the cardigan like a question nobody answered. The point at the top is a real pen nib, bent where you snapped it on Mr Pryce's desk the day he confiscated your ink. I thought you would want the nib back. You always did like a sharp thing you could claim was an accident.

Come to the reunion in Harrogate in June. Bring the feather if you have a better tin. We can argue about who kept the rosary beads and who lost them, and then we can walk down to the reservoir where you once swore the water talked back to you. I will buy the first round. You can pay for the second, as ever, and I will pretend I do not notice the clink of your tin when you put it on the table.

Yours in the old mischief, Bronwen