Black and grey realism tattoo of a woman in jewelled headdress and fan of peacock-style feathers, covering the upper arm and shoulder.

Ornate portrait with feather headdress on upper arm

Realism · Upper arm · Black and grey · Photo

A woman's face is shown in close detail, wearing a jewelled headpiece with drop pendants and a fan of large feather eyes behind her head. Smooth realistic shading and fine hatched linework build the face, while the beaded chains and patterned chest ornaments are rendered in crisp, dense detail. The design wraps around the upper arm and shoulder, with a blurred bookshelf in the background.

Realism Upper arm Shoulder Woman Portrait Headdress Feather Jewellery Bead Chain Pendant Eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The fair came to Thornbury Green the week the river flooded, and the showman's daughter Imelda sold peacock feathers from a tin trunk at the gate. Nobody remembered where the feathers came from. They were long and green-black, each with an eye at the tip that seemed to follow you down the lane.

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A boy called Wat Hollis bought one for a penny and wore it in his cap. That night the fairground horses would not stand still, and in the morning the trunk was open and the feathers were gone. The showman said a headdress was owed to the woman in the glass booth, and that she would come for her due when the moon was full on the water.

Wat went down to the sluice gate with the feather in his hand. The woman in the booth was there, beaded from brow to breastbone, her chains rattling softly like wet pebbles. She asked him nothing. She only lifted her chin, and the eyes on her great fan turned one by one to look at him, slow and patient as a shopkeeper counting coins.

He gave back the feather. She fixed it behind her head, and the river stopped rising by morning. The fair packed up and went north without him, and in the spring Wat found a silver pendant in his coat pocket, shaped like a drop of water, that he had never owned before.