Black ink phoenix tattoo with spread wings and a curling tail on the side of a person's back, shown in black and white.

Enlarged with AI from a smaller original

Phoenix tattoo on the side of the back

Back · Black and grey · Photo

A stylised phoenix with spread wings, a head with a curled crest and a long tail of swirling feathers is tattooed on bare skin. The wings and tail mix solid black areas with fine outlined feather lines, and the head is mostly solid black with a curl detail. The image is black and grey, with the design centred against pale skin and a dark strap across the top.

Back Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Swirl Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

Mother, the north tower came down in the storm on Tuesday, and the masons say the chapel floor is sound enough to walk on, so I have been walking on it every evening with a lamp and a bucket of lime wash. You will think me mad to stay, but Mr Hollis has paid me for the summer and the roof slates are dry under my hands.

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Yesterday, under a slab that had cracked clean through, I found a bird cut into the stone. Its wings were spread wide and its tail went down in curls like smoke off a candle, and someone had worked the feathers with a chisel so fine I could lay my thumb in the grooves. The stone around it was black with old soot, as if a fire had once run up the walls and stopped only at that one shape.

Gwen from the lodge says the bird is the one the old lords swore by, that it burns and comes up again out of its own ash. I told her that sounded like something a man says when he has lost a wife. She only laughed and said I should scrub the soot off before it ate into the carving.

I did not scrub. I sat with my back against the wall and traced the tail with a finger until the lamp guttered. When I stood, my palm was grey and the bird looked, for once, like it was rising rather than falling. I am staying the autumn. Tell Father the lime wash is doing well and that I am not frightened of the dark any more.