Two orange bat-style wing tattoos with dark outlines and purple shading sit either side of the upper back.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Orange wings on upper back

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A pair of orange wing tattoos with dark outlines sits symmetrically on the upper back, with a fan of pointed wing sections. Each wing meets a rounded purple and blue shaded area at its base. The image is a close, straight-on photograph of bare skin with the rest of the body cropped out.

Back Wing Pair Back tattoo

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada, you will not believe what Mr Lockyer has left pegged on the washing line. Two kites, though he insists they are wings, orange as marmalade, with black lines drawn round every rib so they look ready to flap off the pegs. He came down to breakfast with paint under his nails and asked whether the house had any spare tallow. I told him the boarding house had no spare anything, and he laughed, which is more than the gulls manage.

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Here is the business. The Penhale boys have been out past the Mell rocks since Tuesday, and the fog came in like wet wool. Lockyer carried the wings up the cliff path at dusk, fixed a lamp of blue bottle glass at the base of each, and let them go into the wind. From my bedroom window I watched two violet glows hang over the water, low and steady, the way a lantern hangs over a stable door.

The cutter came round the point an hour after midnight, following those lights as if they were on a string. Nobody on the quay said much. Lockyer sat on the harbour step with his hands in his pockets and told everyone the wings were only paper and wire, which is what he tells everyone, but his hands were shaking.

This morning the kites are drying above the range, and the kitchen smells of scorched string and boiled cabbage. The boats are home, all four of them. Burn this after reading, I have said too much already. Your loving sister, Edie.