Realistic feather tattoo wrapped in black ribbon swirls with a script letter M and small star on the upper back, shaded in grey and muted pink.

Feather with ribbon and letter M on upper back

Realism · Back · Mixed · Photo

A shaded feather runs vertically down the upper back, with a curling black ribbon wrapping around its shaft and a loose swirl at the top near the neck. A black script letter M with a small star mark sits at the lower left of the design. The feather uses soft grey and muted rose shading with bold black linework on the ribbon and lettering, set against plain skin.

Realism Lettering Back Feather Ribbon Script Star Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The pit lamp smoked all through supper, so forgive the soot on this page. Mrs Pryce has taken the boys to chapel and I have the kitchen to myself, which means I can finally tell you about the feather. It came down the chimney on Tuesday, grey at the tip and blushing pink near the root, with a length of black ribbon wound round its spine as neat as a bandage. Nobody on Church Row keeps a pigeon that clever. I think your mother has been up to her old tricks again.

I carried it to the window and held it up against the light off the slag heap, and the whole thing looked like a pen waiting for ink. So I wrote. Three sides, every one of them about the price of coal and the new overman who cannot spell his own name. I folded them small, tied them with the same ribbon and sent them back up the shaft with the lad who brings the tea cans.

He came back at dinner time with your answer, four words in pencil on the back of a timekeeper's slip. Not one word about the feather, which I expected, and not one about the ribbon, which I did not. Only that the roof at the east face has held and that you will be up before the frost.

I have pinned the feather to the dresser beside the clock. You will find my initial at the foot of this page, with a little star drawn next to it, the way you used to mark the days on the back of the calendar. Come up before the frost. The feather is still good, and so am I.