Small colour tattoo of a green leaf shape with a red feather laid across it, on pale skin, placed on the lower back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Green leaf and red feather tattoo

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A small tattoo of a green leaf or shield-like shape with a red feather overlaid on its upper right edge. The bold black outline is followed by soft green shading that fades from darker to lighter tones across the shape. The tattoo sits alone in the centre of the frame against pale skin, with dark fabric visible along the top edge.

Back Leaf Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mab had been the only one in the garrison who could still hear the wind through the broken tower, so when the cook's boy went missing on the north road, the captain sent her. She took the green shield from the peg by the gate, the one shaped like a sycamore leaf, because it was light, and because the old steward swore it had turned the rain once when nothing else would.

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The road ran past the ruined chapel and the dry well where the ravens sat in a row like magistrates. Mab found the boy's cap in the nettles, then a single red feather snagged on a blackthorn, its barbs still stiff. She tied it to the rim of the shield with a strip torn from her sleeve and walked on, talking to herself about the weather, because that was what her mother had done on dark roads.

She found him at dusk in the old mill, asleep on a sack of barley with his boots off. A grey-faced woman sat on the beam above him, folding and unfolding a pair of wings that were more hawk than woman, and she said the boy had eaten her blackberries and would not be let go without a bargain. Mab held up the shield. The woman looked at the green rim and the red quill for a long time, then laughed until the rafters shook. "Keep it," she said. "Every shield in this county was cut from the same tree. Walk him home before the frost."

They reached the gate as the bell rang for supper. The captain asked where she had got the feather, and Mab told him the north road, which was true, and the cook's boy said nothing at all, which was also true. The shield went back on its peg with the quill still tied to its rim, and it stayed there, catching the light from the kitchen door.