Black and grey realism style tattoo of a feather with small birds flying off it, placed on the upper back near the shoulder blade.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feather with birds taking flight on upper back

Realism · Back · Black and grey · Photo

A feather is tattooed diagonally across the upper back, with its quill near the shoulder blade and its vane tapering downward. A flock of small birds in flight trails from the top of the feather towards the upper left of the frame. The feather uses soft shading and fine detail along its barbs, while the birds are drawn as simple dark silhouettes against the pale skin.

Realism Back Feather Bird Flight

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Tuesday. The heat came off the road like something alive, so I walked the shoulder early, before the sun got its teeth into the tarmac. Mr Okafor at the petrol station said the ravens had been roosting in the dead cottonwoods by the cattle grid again, and that I'd find feathers if I looked. I did not expect to find a whole wing, flat and unbroken, pinned under a stone the size of a loaf.

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I carried it home in my coat pocket. The vane was still glossy at the tip where the wind hadn't got to it. When I stroked the barbs the wrong way they zipped apart and closed again, the way a zip does when someone has been careless with it. My brother Dele used to say a feather is just a promise a bird forgot to keep. He was always the sort to make things sound clever.

Thursday. Dele rang from Flagstaff to say he's coming through on the 14th with the van. I haven't told him about the wing. I propped it in the window above the sink, quill against the glass, and in the evenings the low light makes a pale grey road across the wall. Last night I counted seven marks in the damp patch by the ceiling that looked like small birds lifting off, and I stopped counting before I convinced myself of anything.

Dele arrives on Friday. I will ask him to drive me out to the cattle grid before the heat, and we will walk the shoulder together. If the birds have gone from the cottonwoods we will carry on as far as the next bend anyway, and see what the road gives back.