Black and grey tattoo of a feathered serpent head with carved stone styling and glyphs on a block, across a man's shoulder and upper chest.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Feathered serpent on shoulder

Shoulder · Black and grey · Photo

The tattoo shows a feathered serpent head with an open jaw, fangs and layered plumes, set against a carved stone block marked with glyphs. The shading is black and grey, with soft grey gradients that give the stone a three-dimensional, weathered look, and faint cracks run across the skin around it. The design spreads from the top of the shoulder across the upper chest, with the serpent's head at the centre right of the frame.

Shoulder Chest Serpent Glyph Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The rain had come in sideways off the canal by eight, and by ten Wes Pargeter had stopped pretending the tarpaulin kept anything dry. Under the awning at the back of Crane Street market, the crate of salvage sat in a puddle he had given up moving. Ines pulled the sacking back and found the stone face-up, a block the size of a loaf, its carved serpent lifting its head out of a bed of layered plumes.

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"Chapel off Dunmore Road," Wes said. "Demolition lads wanted it gone with the rubble. Fifteen quid and the lot's yours." Ines ran her thumb over the glyphs, worn shallow, and counted the rows the way her grandfather had taught her to count rings in a felled ash. This was no chapel stone. Someone had carved it to be seen from below, the jaw open towards whoever stood at the door.

She offered twelve and got it. While Wes sheltered behind his van with a flask, she tipped the block to drain the water from the carving, and a folded slip of paper slid from a crack behind the head. The ink had run, but she could make out a name, a street, and a date in 1974. Below that, in a different hand: keep it out of the rain.

She looked up at the sky, then at the stone, its open mouth already filling again. Ines tucked the block under her coat, paper and all, and carried it inside against her ribs, the cold water still running from its jaw and down her wrist.