Realism tattoo of a woman in a red lace masquerade mask with feathers, grey shading with red accents, on the outer thigh.

Masked woman with red feathers on a thigh

Realism · Thigh · Mixed · Photo

A woman's face is shown in profile, with one eye and the upper face hidden behind an ornate red and silver masquerade mask decorated with lace-like scrollwork. Red feathers rise above the mask, and her hand with red-painted nails holds a slender stick near her lips. The face, hair and hand are rendered in smooth grey shading with fine detail, while the mask and feathers carry the only bright colour.

Realism Thigh Woman Feather Hand Lip Earring Hair

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The ferry only crosses to Sallow Holm on Tuesdays, so you have to choose your mask before the boat leaves the mainland. You pick the red one from Ada Corrie's shop above the chandler's, the one with the silver lace along its brow and two ostrich plumes she dyed madder when the mainland order went astray. Ada says red holds its colour in lamplight when everything else on the island turns to pewter, and by November the whole place is pewter: the sea, the slate roofs, the faces of the men who mend the nets.

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On Lantern Night you sit in the back room with a pen and a slender bone stick Ada gave you for steadying your hand. You mean to write to Tomas Renner, the schoolmaster, who left on the last boat in October without saying goodbye to anyone who could have stopped him. Every line you start goes soft at the edges where the mask's shadow falls across the page. You chew the end of the stick and tear up four drafts before the bell at the harbour begins.

The crowd is thick on the quay, all of them hidden, all of them somebody else. You know Tomas is on the ferry steps before you see him, because the island has only one trunk that squeaks like that when it is dragged over cobbles. He has no mask. He looks past the silver lace and the shadowed eyes straight to the red plume, and he says your name aloud, which breaks the only rule the night allows. You let the stick fall from your fingers into the water between the boat and the steps, and you do not pick it up.

In the morning a single feather is caught on the iron bollard by the slipway, bright as a struck match against the grey stone. The ferryman lifts it, smooths it between finger and thumb, and tucks it inside the crossing ledger with the names of the passengers. The boat goes out on time.