Woman seen from behind with a colourful Japanese-style phoenix and flower sleeve on her arm and a large tattoo across her thigh.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Japanese phoenix and flower sleeve with thigh tattoo

Japanese · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A woman is photographed from behind, showing a full sleeve on her arm with a red and orange phoenix, pink blossoms and swirling clouds. Her thigh and hip carry a larger design with waves, scale-like patterns and a red fan, with black and grey shading giving depth to the darker areas. Bright colour ink dominates the arm, and the background is a blurred red-brown railing and wall.

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The snow has taken the lower road again, so you climb the old pass with a bundle of red paper fans strapped to your back and the bell of the last village still in your ears. Your uncle said the phoenix would show itself to anyone who walked above the tree line in the blossom month, and you laughed at him over the rice pot. Now the cloud sits on the path like wet wool and your breath comes out in grey coins.

Keep reading

Near the summit a shrine roof sags under lichen, and beneath it a woman is selling tea from a kettle balanced on three stones. She does not ask where you are going. She takes one of your fans, opens it slowly, and holds it to the light so the paper glows like a coal. Below the shrine, a line of cherry trees is in flower, impossible at this height, pink against the grey. Waves of mist roll up the far valley and break against the rock beneath your feet.

She tells you the phoenix does not rise from fire the way the paintings say. It rises from the fan, when a person carries it down the mountain and gives it to someone who needs to feel warm. You think of the lacquer bowls in your uncle's shop, the cracks filled with gold, and you understand she is talking about the mending rather than the flying.

You pay her with your last coins and take a fan back, though it is not for sale. Halfway down, the cloud tears open and the valley lies below you, bright with scales of rice field and river. You fold the fan shut and tuck it under your arm like a letter you mean to deliver.

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