Pencil drawing of a feathered phoenix-dragon hybrid wrapped around swirling cloud scrolls, in a Japanese-influenced tattoo design style.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Phoenix and dragon with cloud scrolls

Japanese · Black and grey · Flash

A pencil drawing of a serpentine creature with a feathered phoenix head and wings, and a dragon-like head and forelegs, coiled through swirling cloud motifs. The linework is fine and sketched, with soft grey shading that gives the feathers and scales depth. The design is shown in black and grey on a plain pale background, filling most of the frame.

Japanese Phoenix Dragon Feather Wing Cloud Scroll Creature

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tomasz, I am writing this at the kitchen table because the lift is out again and Mrs Okafor has the only working torch on the ninth floor. You asked me to stop sending you letters about the pigeons, so this one is about the thing that came over Hadleigh Court on Tuesday night, and you can laugh if you like.

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It was longer than the crane at the old wharf, and it wasn't a bird at first. It came in low over the car park with its wings held up like a pair of wet umbrellas, and the feathers on its head were lit orange by the sodium lamps. Then it turned, and I saw the other end was scaled, with four clawed legs folded under its belly like a cat settling in. Between the two halves it was all curling cloud, grey and furled, the kind my nan used to pick out of the wool on the rug. Nobody on the stairwell could agree what it was. Mr Dhillon swore it was a kite. The Walsh boys said dragon and would not be argued with.

It didn't land. It circled the blue tower twice, slowly, the way you'd walk round a sleeping dog, then folded itself into the cloud scrolls and went north over the ring road. Those scrolls stayed behind, though. This morning there was a drift of them caught on the railings of the bin store, pale and pencilled, curled into the shape of a question mark that nobody has the nerve to sweep away.

I've kept one in my purse. It weighs nothing. Come up at the weekend and we'll see if the lift is working, and if it isn't, we'll take the stairs and look for the creature's tail under the lamps. Love, Ewa.