Painted phoenix design in warm yellow, orange and red feathers, with wings spread upward and a long flowing tail, on pale textured paper.

Painted phoenix in red and gold feathers

Colour · Flash

A full-length phoenix with its head turned to the left and wings spread wide, one raised high and one extended low. The feathers are rendered with soft watercolour or gouache washes and fine darker outlines, and the tail sweeps down into curled, flame-like plumes. The palette is mainly yellow, orange and deep red on a cream background, with the subject centred and isolated.

Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Tail Flame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit down, the lot of you, before the urn boils dry and takes the raffle prizes with it. Yes, Gary, I can see you reaching for the sherry. I taught chemistry in this town for thirty-one years, so I know the look of a man about to cause trouble.

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This starts in the spring of nineteen seventy-eight, when the art department painted a phoenix across the wall of the assembly hall. Rosalind Pike did most of the work alone, mixing red and gold poster paint in jam jars. Her bird had its head turned to the left, one wing lifted over the stage and one dragged low over the doors, as if it could not decide whether to leave or land. Nobody thought much of it until the October the boiler room caught fire.

By four o'clock the science block was gone and the library with it. The next morning we stood in the car park in our coats, and everything was black, everything except that phoenix, bright as a struck match on the hall wall with not a scorch on its tail. Rosalind swore the feathers were warm. The caretaker said that was nonsense, then he touched one and went quiet.

She left the town the summer after and never came back, not even for the reunions. Last week a padded envelope arrived at the school office, addressed to me in a hand I'd know anywhere. Inside was one feather, painted gold on one side and red on the other, and a note that said only: Keep it warm.