Ornamental phoenix with spread wings

Black and grey · Flash

A stylised phoenix or bird with wide, spread wings and a tail of curling feathers that trails down the page. The linework is detailed and ornamental, with dotted edges, scrolls and dark shaded areas on the wings and body. The design is shown in black and grey on a plain white background.

Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Swirl Scrollwork Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomas,

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The bird came down out of the beech wood on Tuesday, just as the mist was lifting off the mill pond, and it did not look like anything I had seen in the county. Its wings were folded the way a fan is folded, all those ribs and scalloped edges, and its tail hung down behind it like a bell-rope left slack. Mrs Pennock swears it was the same bird that burned the barn at Hollins Farm forty years ago, though she was only a child then and I think she dreams it.

I did what you would have done. I took the ledger and the tin of lamp oil and climbed the bank to where it had landed. It was picking at the moss with a beak as fine as a bradawl, and when it looked up its eyes were two small black beads with the light caught in them, like the glass knobs on your mother's sideboard. It did not run. It only shook out one wing, slowly, and every dotted edge along the feathers trembled as though someone had pricked a line of holes through them with a needle.

I wrote down the time, the weather and the exact number of curls at the base of its tail, which is eleven, and then I went home. I am not brave enough to say more in a letter that will be read by the postmaster. Come up when the thaw is in. Bring the brass gauge and the good ink. I think it means to stay until someone has finished drawing it properly.

Your friend, Eli