Colour tattoo of a black and orange phoenix with flame swirls on the side of a torso, above the hip, worn above jeans.

Phoenix and flame swirls on the side

Neo-trad · Other · Colour · Photo

A black and orange phoenix faces left with its wings spread, set among black-outlined orange and red flame swirls. The linework is bold and clean, with soft shading in the feathers and flames. The design curls around the flank above the waistband of a pair of embroidered jeans.

Neo-trad Other Phoenix Flame Swirl Bird Feather

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The lamp went dark at a quarter past three, and by the time you had your boots laced and the stair door shoved open against the wind, the sea had already found the gallery rail. Nobody else on Carrick Skerry climbs the hundred and twelve steps in a February gale. Mrs Odell at the mainland office has said so twice on the radio, and twice you have told her the light does not care who is willing.

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Inside the lantern room the brass was cold enough to ache. Your grandmother's tin of wicks sat where she left it, and beside it the chimney glass, cracked along one side, that you have meant to replace since autumn. You strike the match, feed the burner, then wait with your palm flat against the housing the way she taught you, feeling for the first breath of heat. It comes slowly: a red tongue unfolding, then a curl of orange that bends toward the glass as if something behind it wants out.

That was the winter the Maren Lys went onto the Cutters. You were nine, watching from the kitchen window while she sat up here with her back to the sea, turning the lens by hand when the clockwork gave up. In the morning there were three men pulled from the surf at Gull Cove and a child's wooden horse tangled in the kelp. She said nothing for a week. She only pinned the horse above the stove and kept the wick trimmed, and told you that a flame which has burnt through a bad night is the only kind worth keeping.

Now the beam swings out across the black water in a long bright sweep. Far off, a trawler's lamp answers it, then another, and you watch the light rise and fall like wings that have just discovered they can lift. You knock the old ash from the wick, scatter it over the rail, and go down the stairs before the cold can claim your hands.