Colour tattoo of a golden and green phoenix with spread wings and an open beak, running from the shoulder across the chest and down the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Golden phoenix across chest and ribs

Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A large phoenix-style bird spreads its wings from the shoulder across the chest and down the side of the ribs, with its head turned towards the viewer and talons extended. The feathers are shaded in golden yellow, olive green and dark tones, with fine strands and curling swirls along the long tail feathers that trail towards the hip. A small red accent sits near the centre of the chest, and the design fills most of the torso side in the frame.

Shoulder Chest Ribs Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Talon Swirl Tail feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit still, our Tom, and stop turning that lamp over. You'll have the glass off and then where will we be, the pair of us in the dark with the slag still breathing.

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The bird came down the night number three furnace went out. Nobody saw it come. We saw the glow first, a yellow bar lying across the cinder path like somebody had left a door open in the sky. Then Arthur Pask, who had been counting ladles since before the war, put his hand on my arm and said, hold on, Eddie, that's no fire.

It stood on the cold brick by the tap hole, its wings folded down its back like a coat too big for it, and every feather was the colour of old brass. The tail trailed away behind it, long strands curling over the rails and knotting themselves into little lights. It turned its head towards us, slow, and we saw the eye, and the talons came out from under it bright as new nails.

It didn't speak. Birds don't, whatever the pub says. But it lifted one wing and laid it across the ash heap, and where the feathers brushed the grey, the grey went gold, and then the gold went out, and a green shoot had pushed up through the cinders by morning.

Arthur said the works would close within the year, and it did. The furnace never lit again and nobody came back for the bird. But every spring since, there's a tuft of something green on that slag heap, and Arthur's granddaughter swears she saw a gleam under the nettles last November. So mind that lamp, Tom. Some things are only waiting for the dark to turn round.