Ink and watercolour drawing of a phoenix with spread wings and a long flowing tail, shaded in yellow and red on paper.

Phoenix in flight, ink and watercolour design

Mixed · Flash

A stylised phoenix with outstretched wings and a curving head crest is drawn in black ink on a yellow watercolour wash. The wings and tail are shaded in red and orange, fading into the yellow, while the tail ends in looping swirls and small red dots. The bird is centred on a pale, unpainted background at the lower edge of the sheet.

Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Flame Swirl

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Dear Tom,

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The kiln went up again on Tuesday, the second time since you left, and I stood on the quay with Mrs Pryce's shawl over my head and watched the smoke go straight up into a sky the colour of weak tea. Nobody was hurt. Dad says the sea wind turned the flames away from the sheds, and Dad would say that about a bonfire. The fishermen came up from the slipway with buckets anyway, and old Eli from the chandlery stood there with his hands in his pockets as if he were waiting for a tide.

Afterwards I went down to the cellar with a lamp and found the sketchbook you left under the bench. I keep returning to the page where you drew the bird, the one with its wings flung wide and its tail trailing away like a ribbon in a current. You laid the yellow down first, a wash that ran into the paper's edges, then went over the wings in red until they looked scorched at the tips. I used to think it was a silly thing to draw on a Tuesday. Now I think you knew something about fire that I did not.

The new batch cools tomorrow. Dad says we will lose two bowls and keep the rest, which is more than we managed last year. I have decided to put a little of your yellow into the glaze on the last firing, a smear at the base, so the red has something to rise out of. If it cracks, it cracks. Write when you make port, and tell me whether the gulls still follow the boats up past the breakwater.

Love, Nell