Colourful Neo-trad style tattoo of a green and orange phoenix with peacock feathers across the side of the ribs.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Phoenix and peacock feathers on ribs

Neo-trad · Ribs · Colour · Photo

A large phoenix with outstretched wings rises from the lower side of the ribs, with a tail of flame at its head and several peacock feather eye motifs curling upwards. The linework is bold and the feathers use smooth shading, with green, yellow, orange, purple and red ink. The design fills the frame diagonally against bare skin with a black garment visible at the top edge.

Neo-trad Ribs Phoenix Peacock feather Bird Flame Wing

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The gulls had been at the washing again, so Mrs Tamsin Coyle sent her youngest up to the attic for the peacock sheet. Nobody at the Harbour View had slept under it since the winter the sea came through the scullery, but it was the only thing in the house bright enough to shame the grey weather. Ada climbed the ladder with a candle and found the sheet folded around something hard.

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It was a bird no longer than her forearm, its wings the colour of bottle glass and its tail a bundle of flame that had gone cold. Beside it lay three peacock feathers, their eyes still shining as if someone had only just let go of them. Ada had heard her grandmother say that a phoenix burns once for every feather it drops, and that a house which keeps one never has to pay for coal. She did not believe it, but she carried the bird down anyway, cupped in both hands like a moth.

That night the boarders complained of a light under the stairs. The retired pilot in room four swore the feathers in their frames were turning. Mrs Coyle said nothing. She set the bird on the mantel above the range and went out to the shingle, where the tide was coming in over the lobster pots. When she came back the bird had unfolded its wings, the feathers on the wall had spread too, green and violet, and the whole kitchen smelled of struck matches and salt.

In the morning the bird was gone, and so were the gulls. In their place on the washing line hung one peacock feather, dry as paper, with an eye that blinked when Ada looked at it too long. She pinned it inside the pantry door and never told anyone where the rest of the fire had gone.