Colour peacock feather tattoo in purple, orange and teal, with black and grey feather barbs, on the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peacock feather on the ribs

Neo-trad · Ribs · Mixed · Photo

A peacock feather runs diagonally across the side of the ribcage, with a purple and orange eye containing teal and pink detail at its base. The feather's barbs are rendered in black and grey shading with white highlights, fading toward the lower right. The plain background and dark clothing at the edges keep the focus on the tattoo.

Neo-trad Ribs Peacock feather Feather Peacock eye

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

On the road that runs out past the salt flats there was a woman called Ysolde Marr, who sold feathers from a cart pulled by a donkey named Brass. Her peacock had died before she bought it from a travelling menagerie man at Coldwater, and she kept its plumes in a tin box lined with wool. Most of the feathers went to women in the towns who wanted something to pin to their hats.

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One evening a boy came walking out of the heat with no shoes and asked for water. She gave him a cup and he asked what the eyes on the feathers were for. She said every feather carries one eye so the bird it came from can keep watching the road even when it is gone. He laughed and told her feathers have no eyes. She took the darkest one from the box, the one with the purple sheen and the orange ring, and held it up to the sun until teal and pink came up at its heart.

The boy stayed three nights and ate her bread and said very little. On the fourth morning the tin was empty and Brass stood in the road with his ears laid back. Ysolde followed the cart tracks east toward the old well and found the boy on its rim, the feathers fanned across his knees like a hand of cards. Every eye was turned toward the road she had come by.

She did not take them back. She sat beside him until the stars came out and the well rope creaked in the dark. In the morning a wind came off the flats and lifted every feather at once, and they all leaned the same way, towards the town and the cart and the woman who had made them watch.