Black and grey peacock tattoo with flowing tail feathers and scrolls running down the side of a torso, above pink lace underwear.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peacock and flowers on the side torso

Ribs · Black and grey · Photo

A grey-shaded peacock with a detailed head crest and ornate scrolled plumage sits on the side of the torso, with its long tail feathers curling down towards the hip. Soft shading and fine linework give the feathers depth, and a rose-like flower is partly visible beside the bird. The photograph is taken at a close angle, with the pink lace underwear framing the lower part of the tattoo.

Ribs Peacock Feather Flower Rose Scroll Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Ada,

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The rain hasn't let up since Tuesday and the gaslamps along Hope Street have gone the colour of weak tea, so I'm writing this at the back of the shop with my boots on the stove rail. Mrs Callendar's commission came through on Friday. She wants a peacock painted on the lid of her late husband's cigar box, crest raised, tail trailing down the side like a spill of ink. I said a week. She said she'd pay for three.

I have spent four nights on the eye alone. It's no bigger than a lentil and it has to look as though it knows something. The crest is the trouble: seven little spears, each a shade darker than the last, and the plumage is all scrolls that want to run away from me if I breathe too hard. I've been using the grey wash you always called timid, and I'm glad you were wrong, because it softens the edges until the feathers seem to lift off the wood.

Last night she came down herself, in a wet coat, and stood where the lamp could catch her face. She didn't ask about the bird. She asked whether I could leave a space by the hinge for a rose, small, the kind that's already falling open. Then she told me her husband had bought the box on the day they married, and that he'd always said a peacock was the only bird that could look at the night and not be frightened of it.

I finished the tail at three this morning. It curls down to the brass hinge exactly as the drawing promised, and when I held the lid to the stove light the shading made it seem to shift, just slightly, as if it were deciding whether to fly. I haven't the heart to tell her I'm not sure it didn't.

Yours in ink and cold feet, Tom