Colour phoenix tattoo in red, orange and yellow with black outlines, flying across a shoulder and upper arm.

Phoenix on a shoulder

Neo-trad · Shoulder · Colour · Photo

A phoenix in flight with its head turned to the left, its wings and tail feathers drawn in black outline. The body and flame-like tail are filled with red, orange and yellow, with some shading that gives the feathers depth, while the outer wing feathers are left as open linework. The design spans the top of the shoulder and down onto the upper arm, and the photo is taken at a slight angle under indoor light.

Neo-trad Shoulder Upper arm Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Flame

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The oven had gone out twice before four o'clock, and Maud knew better than to blame the gas. She knelt on the cold tiles with the poker, raking the ash back until a single orange eye showed under the grate. Behind her the proving baskets sat under their tea towels like sleeping animals, and the dough in them had already been left too long.

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She fed the firebox kindling from the box her father had carried in from the yard in 1979, the wood gone silver at the edges. The flame took, hesitated, then climbed the back wall in a fan of yellow and red, bending to the left as if the draught from the flue had a direction of its own. Maud watched it settle into a shape she had stopped seeing years ago: a long tail, a wing lifting to meet the heat.

By half past five the first tray of loaves came out, crusts blistered and singing. She set them on the rack by the window, where the glass was still black and her reflection hung there with flour on its cheek. Across the road a bus slid past, its lights pale against the wet brick, and nobody on it looked in.

The last batch was the rye her father had never let anyone else shape. She scored each loaf with a single slash and watched it open like a wing before it went in. When the door swung shut on the heat, Maud wiped her hands and went to check the fire, which had burned down to a low, patient glow, ready to be fed again tomorrow.