Black ink tattoo design of an arrow with the words Little Pieces of Hope above a mandala and a fan of feathers, in a blackwork style.

Feathers, mandala and arrow with lettering

Blackwork · Black and grey · Flash

A black ink design showing an arrow with the words LITTLE PIECES OF HOPE set above it in hand-drawn capitals. Below the arrow, a circular mandala with dotted and striped bands sits above a fan of long, detailed feathers. The linework is fine and dense, with solid black areas and white highlights, and the image is entirely black and white on a plain background.

Blackwork Geometric Arrow Feather Mandala Lettering

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The third gull feather of the morning was the one that made you stop sweeping. It lay on the back step of Gull Rest, grey-barred and perfect, with a notch in one vane as if something had tried to nip a bite out of it. Aunt Maud said the gulls came up from the harbour wall every spring to quarrel over the bins, and that a feather in the yard was only rubbish with ambitions. You put it in your apron pocket anyway.

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By Thursday the pocket was heavy. Mr Abney in room four, who had been coming to Sallow Point since before the pier caught fire, took one look at your collection and asked whether you knew what a mandala was. You did not. He drew one for you on the back of a tide table: a ring, then a ring inside that, dotted with little triangles like teeth. 'Everything circles back,' he said, 'except the things that don't. Those you fan out and hope.' He had an ash arrow in his case too, its fletching gone the colour of weak tea, and he let you lay it across the card like a line of text.

You spent the wet afternoon in the back parlour with the kettle boiling over twice, fanning the feathers into a half-sun, longest at the bottom, the notched one dead centre where he said it would be least noticed. He wrote the words across the top in his careful capitals, then spoiled the H and laughed at himself until he coughed.

He checked out on Saturday and left the card propped against the teapot. Weeks later, you found one feather still caught on the sill of room four, grey and unnotched. You lifted the sash and let the wind have it, and it went out over the harbour wall, one small piece of something, and you did not go after it.