Black and grey phoenix tattoo with spread wings and a leafy feather tail across a person's outer thigh.

Phoenix with feather tail on outer thigh

Thigh · Black and grey · Photo

A phoenix with spread wings and a head raised above its body is set against a long, flowing tail of stylised leaves and feathers, with small buds at the wing tips. The linework is fine and detailed, with soft greyscale shading across the wings and foliage. The design runs diagonally down the outer thigh, with the torso and black underwear visible above and the upper body cropped out of frame.

Thigh Phoenix Bird Wing Feather Leaves Tail

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A story inspired by this tattoo · fiction

The phoenix came down to the Pryce orchard the week the windfalls started, when the wasps had found the cider barrels and the grass had gone the colour of old straw. Mabel saw it first from the ladder, a bird the size of a heron folding itself among the Blenheim trees, its head held high as if it had been told to wait for someone.

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Her grandson Ivo wanted to climb down and touch it. Mabel told him a phoenix does not mind being looked at but dislikes being kept. Its tail ran through the grass like a long flame gone cold, and where the feathers brushed the ground they turned into leaves, dark green with pale eyes in them, and from the leaves small buds opened and shut like tired mouths.

Every evening for nine days it sat in the same row. On the ninth, the wind came from the west, the bird lifted its wings, and the buds at the tips caught the light. Mabel asked it what it wanted. It said nothing, but it left a single feather on the stile. Ivo carried it indoors and it was warm, as though it had been lying in the sun all day.

Mabel pressed the feather between the pages of the almanac, and the next spring the pear tree by the gate flowered twice. The phoenix did not come back that year. It had taken its fire with it, she said, and left its leaves to the orchard, which was the only fair bargain anyone had ever made with a bird.