Line drawing of a phoenix rising inside a ring of stylised flame feathers in dark brown ink on a cream background, a tattoo design with no body placement shown.

Phoenix rising within flames design

Colour · Flash

A stylised phoenix with its head raised and wings spread stands at the centre of a ring of tapering flame-like feathers, with a curl of flame at the top. The design is drawn with solid dark brown filled shapes and fine hatching on the feathers, set against a plain cream background. The composition is symmetrical and bold, with clear negative space between the flame shapes.

Phoenix Flame Bird Feather Wing Circle

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The coal went down to Brentford on Tuesday and the Oakmoor had a cracked stern gland that wanted a new packing before we could turn her in the basin. Dad would have swore at it for an hour. I did it in two, with the wet rag round my wrist and the lamp hung off the tiller, and when I came up the ladder my hands were black to the elbow and Mrs Pryce from the next boat clapped like I'd won a regatta.

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What I haven't told anyone is about the bird. Three nights back, moored below the lock at Hanwell, I woke before light and the cabin was full of a smell like struck matches. Through the little window the water had gone the colour of pewter, and on the towpath someone had lit a brazier under the willows. Above it the mist was rising in a great ring, curling at the top like a wick, and standing in the middle of the ring, as plain as a brass plate, was a bird with its neck raised and its wings open. I could see the feathers tapering off into the fog. It didn't move. It just waited, the way a heron waits, and I knew it was waiting for me to get up.

I didn't get up. I put the blanket over my head like a child, which I am not, and when I looked again at six the brazier was cold and the willows were only willows. The Oakmoor's gland holds now. Mrs Pryce says the mist was the lock-keeper's bonfire of wet leaves and the bird was a trick of the light on the cabin glass. Perhaps she's right. But I have started leaving the lamp lit at night, and I have bought a new packing ring from the chandler in Uxbridge, and I have not yet told Tom he can have the tiller.