Full colour peacock tattoo running down the side of a bare back, with a teal neck and green and gold eye feathers in a neo-traditional style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Peacock tattoo down the back

Neo-trad · Back · Colour · Photo

A peacock with its neck curved upwards and its head turned to one side, rendered in teal, green and blue. The tail feathers fan down over the ribs and lower back, each showing a gold and blue eye. Bold dark outlines and smooth colour blends give the design a painted, graphic finish against a plain dark background.

Neo-trad Back Ribs Peacock Feather Eye Bird

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Now sit close, you, because the cut is cold after dark and this is a story for keeping warm. Our Nell kept the lock at Haddon Weir the summer the peacock came down off the hill. Nobody in Derbyshire had seen a bird like that since the old squire's menagerie burnt. It walked the towpath as if it owned the water, neck bent up like a question nobody had dared ask it.

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Every feather on its tail had an eye in it, gold rimmed and blue as a gas flame. Nell's father used to say you could tell which boats were coming up the cut by the way the eyes turned to watch them. The squire's man came with a net and a ledger and a great deal of talk about rent. He wanted the bird sold to a fellow in Birmingham who collected odd things. 'Two hundred guineas for the lot,' he said, tapping the book. Nell said nothing. She simply opened the lock gate and let the bird walk through the wet stones to the far bank, where the water was black and the reeds stood up like spears.

The man went after it with his net. The fog came off the water that evening, thick as wool, and when it lifted the bird was gone, and so was the net, and the squire's man was sitting on the lock beam with his boots full of river and not one word left in his mouth. Nell found a single feather caught on the gate. When she held it to the lamp, one of its eyes gave a small gold blink.

They say on still nights you can still see the tail fanned out over the weir, eyes opening one at a time as the barges pass. Mind you, if one of them ever winks at you, don't go telling the Birmingham man. That's a debt the river keeps, and it always collects.