Colour tattoo of a peacock with magenta eye-spot feathers and pink peonies wrapping around an upper arm, in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peacock and peonies on an upper arm

Neo-trad · Upper arm · Colour · Photo

A peacock with a teal head and crest sits above a cluster of pink peonies and green leaves, with its long tail feathers trailing down the arm in magenta and pink. The design uses bold black outlines, smooth colour fills and soft shading on the bird's wings and neck. The composition follows the curve of the upper arm, with the bird at the top and the tail sweeping towards the elbow.

Neo-trad Botanical Upper arm Peacock Peony Flower Feather Leaves Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Sit closer, you lot, and mind the goat. No, the other goat. Now, my grandmother swore this happened at the edge of Hollin Wood, where the last cottage leans on the boundary stone, and she never once told it without wiping her hands on her apron first. A peacock came down through the bracken one June, when the peonies in Mrs Abernethy's garden had split their buds and the whole lane smelled of them.

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Nobody in Hollin kept peacocks. The squire's wife had tried, years back, and the birds screamed at the church bells until she sent them to the coast. So when this one stood on the wall, fanning a tail the colour of a bruise going green, folk came out with their brooms and their suspicions. It looked at them the way a magistrate looks at a poacher. Then it walked straight past the brooms and into Mrs Abernethy's peonies, plucked one pink head clean off the stem, and swallowed it whole.

Here's the part my grandmother saved for last. The following morning every peony in the lane had a single eye opened in its centre, rimmed in gold, watching the road. Mrs Abernethy swore they blinked when the carts went by. The eyes faded by Michaelmas, but the bird never came back for its share of the bargain, and nobody ever learned what the bargain was.

So when you walk the lane in June and the blooms hang heavy, keep your eyes open. Not out of fear, mind. Something out there is still counting what we owe it. Now, who's had the last of the cider?